The National Incident Management System (NIMS) is one of the most highly debated and controversial tools used in EMS today. By design it is meant to be a scalable system usable on something as small as a motor vehicle collision or as large as a hurricane struck region. Its effectiveness as an all hazards response has often been called into question due to some lackluster results of its use. While I cannot say that the design is without flaw, it is not entirely to blame. One of the issues NIMS has is that those utilizing it do not necessarily understand it in its entirety and all of its components. To help make that understanding easier, improve the outcome of a NIMS deployment, and provide a dynamic tool for use with such an event Informed Guides has come out with the NIMS: Incident Command System Field Guide™ app.
As A Reference Source
While IS100, IS200, IS700, and IS800 are all still recommended courses to take for a full and comprehensive understanding of NIMS, this app provides a fantastic resource of information for the entire Incident Command System (ICS) that is easily reviewable and usable. This isn’t something that is easy to do, especially considering that the courses are 12 hours total and that is A LOT of information.
The guide is comprehensive in its description of the divisions of the ICS and both their common and individual responsibilities. The app includes organizational charts for both the large scale view as well as for individual sections in a graphic format to illustrate the proper structure. The media files are saved to your SD card and includes a zoom feature to make the biggest chart easily viewable.
It achieves an ease of use thanks to a top bar navigation that allows you to quickly jump to the section that you need to reference. This makes looking up specific information such as concepts or responsibilities a snap.
Interactive Tools
The ability to interact with content is what makes an application stand out, and the NIMS: Incident Command System Field Guide™ app stands above the rest with its robust set of interactive features.
The application includes checklists for each and every role within an ICS structure. Each individual role checklist is divided into Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary responsibilities. As you complete a responsibility you simply depress it, the list marks it as complete and it will highlight the next responsibility. Once you’re done with the list, it is easily resettable for either the next Operational cycle or the next event.
The checklists also includes the ability to add individual items to an already existing list or create an entirely new checklist that can be integrated into a specific role. This level of customization can be especially useful for roles that the ICS standards might lack, such as for Public Information Officers (PIO) who would need to add the management of social media presences to their responsibilities.
While the checklists are a great feature that will help you maintain focus and complete your responsibilites the other big feature may be considered even more important since one of the tenets of ICS is coordination.
The app has an editable Contact List featuring all the roles within an ICS structure. The list will allow you to edit information directly in the app or you can import contact information from the contacts in your phone and drag them to the role that they are fulfilling. It’s not uncommon for people’s roles to change during the course of the incident and this feature allows you to easily keep track of who is in charge of what and allows you easy and direct access to them for improved coordination of resources.
In Conclusion
While NIMS and ICS may attract criticism and controversy when things go wrong, we as responders owe it to the system to utilize it as it is intended. Due to the fact that we may rarely use it in our systems, we need to have the NIMS: Incident Command System Field Guide™ app available to us no matter what role we are playing in the system, because we need to be able to perform the function as intended. This app can undoubtedly help make that happen.
The app is available in the Droid Marketplace as well as in the iOS iTunes App Store for those of you not fortunate to be Big Brother free.
