National Incident Management System (NIMS)
The Secretary of Homeland Security released the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in March 2004. The purpose of NIMS is to provide a consistent, nationwide template to enable Federal, state, local, and tribal governments and other non-governmental organizations to work together to prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from domestic incidents, regardless of cause or severity.
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 5 (HSPD- 5), Management of Domestic Incidents, requires all federal departments and agencies to adopt and implement NIMS, and requires state and local jurisdictions to implement NIMS to receive federal preparedness funding. Although colleges and universities are not first response organizations, they are important components within their local communities. For that reason, FEMA's NIMS Integration Center highly recommends that educational institutions be involved in their community's emergency planning process, and that those persons with emergency responsibilities at the college or university work with the community's emergency response community and know about NIMS and ICS. Additionally, colleges and universities that receive federal preparedness assistance through grants, contracts, or other activities must have adopted NIMS as of October 1, 2004.
FEMA offers several online training course on NIMS and other emergency management issues through their Emergency Management Institute.
This course introduces NIMS and takes approximately three hours to complete. It explains the purpose, principles, key components and benefits of NIMS. The course also contains "Planning Activity" screens giving you an opportunity to complete some planning tasks during this course. The planning activity screens are printable so that you can use them after you complete the course.
For more information about NIMS, please visit these external web sites:
- NIMS document
- NIMS Integration Center
- Frequently asked questions (FAQs) about NIMS
- Summary of NIMS Implementation Schedule
- NIMS Tools and Templates
Updated 08/02/2006 10:00am