NIMS
The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is a system used in the United States to coordinate emergency preparedness and incident management among various federal, state, and local agencies.
The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is a structured framework used nationwide for both governmental and nongovernmental agencies to respond to natural disasters and or terrorist attacks at the local, state, and federal levels of government.
The 2003 presidential directive required all federal agencies to adopt the NIMS and to use it in their individual domestic incident management and emergency prevention, preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation programs and activities. NIMS is a comprehensive, national approach to incident management that is applicable at all jurisdictional levels and across functional disciplines. It is intended to:
- Be applicable across a full spectrum of potential incidents, hazards, and impacts, regardless of size, location or complexity.
- Improve coordination and cooperation between public and private entities in a variety of incident management activities.
- Provide a common standard for overall incident management.
Since 2006, all administrators and crisis team members have been required to be trained in the National Incident Management System. In addition, each year additional staff members are trained in NIMS with the goal that eventually all staff member will receive this training.