The nanoscaled electrostatically actuated electromechanical ohmic switch is an emerging device with advanced performance in terms of I-ON/I-OFF ratio. It is imperative that compact models accompany such novel devices in order to fully evaluate their potential at the circuit-level. A minimal, yet, adequate compact model is developed and analyzed in this work. Further, the model is used as a compass for switch design space exploration and, simultaneously, a corresponding parameter extraction methodology is compiled. The application on data from numerical simulations and on measurements of fabricated devices, verifies the potential of the model, while circuit-level simulations validate its robustness within an industrial IC design environment. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.