What Is The National Incident Management System (Nims)? By Carmen Daecher

Overview

On February 28, 2003, President Bush issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5. HSPD-5 directed the Secretary of Homeland Security to develop and administer a National Incident Management System. NIMS provides a consistent nationwide template to enable all government, private-sector, and nongovernmental organizations to work together during domestic incidents.

This lesson will describe the key concepts and principles of NIMS, and the benefits of using the system for domestic incident response. At the end of this lesson, you should be able to describe these key concepts, principles, and benefits.

What is NIMS?

NIMS is a comprehensive, national approach to incident management that is applicable at all jurisdictional levels and across functional disciplines. The intent of NIMS is to:

  • Be applicable across a full spectrum of potential incidents and hazard scenarios, regardless of size or complexity.
  • Improve coordination and cooperation between public and private entities in a variety of domestic incident management activities.

NIMS Compliance

HSPD-5 requires Federal departments and agencies to make the adoption of NIMS by State and local organizations a condition for Federal preparedness assistance (grants, contracts, and other activities) by FY 2005.

Jurisdictions can comply in the short term by adopting the Incident Command System. Other aspects of NIMS require additional development and refinement to enable compliance at a future date.

National Incident Management System

Developed by the Secretary of Homeland Security at the request of the President, the National Incident Management System (NIMS) integrates effective practices in emergency preparedness and response into a comprehensive national framework for incident management. The NIMS will enable responders at all levels to work together more effectively to manage domestic incidents no matter what the cause, size or complexity.

The benefits of the NIMS system will be significant:

  • Standardized organizational structures, processes and procedures;
  • Standards for planning, training and exercising, and personnel qualification standards;
  • Equipment acquisition and certification standards;
  • Interoperable communications processes, procedures and systems;
  • Information management systems; and
  • Supporting technologies - voice and data communications systems, information systems, data display systems and specialized technologies.

National Incident Management System Training

The NIMS Integration Center is coordinating the development of a National Standard Curriculum for NIMS, which will be built around available federal training opportunities and course offerings that support NIMS implementation. The curriculum also will serve to clarify training that is necessary for NIMS-compliance and streamline the training approval process for courses recognized by the curriculum.

Initially, the curriculum will be made up of NIMS awareness training and training to support the Incident Command System (ICS). Eventually it will expand to include all NIMS training requirements including training established to meet national credentialing standards. Presently, this site only lists NIMS-related course offerings available through EMI, USFA and the Noble Training Center.

NIMS National Standard Curriculum: Training Development Guidance

These are guidelines for ICS training providers that will help them ensure that the training they offer meets the requirements of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). The Guidance provides an evaluation checklist for content that may be used to make sure that ICS training meets the "as taught by DHS" standard. It also outlines NIMS ICS concepts and principles, management characteristics, organizations and operations, organizational element titles and recommendations for a model curriculum.

IS700 NIMS Course Materials Available for Classroom Setting

IS700 NIMS: An introduction is a Web-based awareness level course that explains NIMS components, concepts and principles. Although it is designed to be taken online as an interactive Web-course, course materials may be downloaded and used in a group or classroom setting. Answer sheets may be obtained from the Emergency Management Institute by calling the EMI Independent Study Office at 301-447-1256. To obtain the IS700 course materials or take the course online go to http://training.fema.gov/emiweb/IS/is700.asp. More than 80,000 persons have now completed the course. All together, course completions for introduction to and Basic ICS for Federal Disaster Workers, the National Response Plan and NIMS Introduction total 117,000 as of February 20, 2005.

National Response Plan Training

Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response, has announced the release of IS-800 The National Response Plan (NRP), an introduction, a distance-learning course available online that introduces emergency management practitioners to the NRP. The course is designed for federal departments and agencies, but state, local, tribal and private sector will find it useful also.

Information about this training is available at http://training.fema.gov/. Questions concerning NIMS and related training issues may be directed to NIMS-Integration-Center@dhs.gov.

NIMS Training

IS700 NIMS: An Introduction
This is a Web-based awareness level course designed to explain NIMS components, concepts and principles. The classroom version of this course may be downloaded at http://training.fema.gov/EMIWeb/IS/is700.asp. Over 30,000 thousand individuals had already completed this course as of December 2004.

IS800 The National Response Plan: An Introduction
This is a comprehensive, interactive Web-based introduction to the new federal protocol for responding to incidents of national significance.

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