Disaster planning and emergency incident management require the effective and efficient management of personnel, facilities, equipment, supplies and other resources. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was promulgated to assure optimal resource management in emergency situations.
As a critical element of the NIMS protocols, and of great utility to the Incident Command System designed to improve emergency response effectiveness, response time, and efficiency for all disasters, Resource Typing is the process by which resources can be identified, pinpointed, tracked and deployed across multiple regions and jurisdictions.
Although many emergency incidents can be handled independently at a local level, when a major incident occurs that requires the resources of multiple responders, jurisdictions and municipalities, it is imperative that the tenets of sound Incident Command be followed per the NIMS guidelines in order to assure that local entities can adequately tap into the greater resource asset base from other jurisdictions, states and even federal government resources.
Resource Typing organizes critical resource elements across the universe of emergency and incident management responders and frameworks. Through automated resource typing, the utility of resource typing and management is greatly enhanced for purposes of Incident Command and Incident Management. The Resource Typing System (RTS) establishes a NIMS standard process and methodology to order, identify, mobilize, dispatch, and track the resource(s) required to support incident management and response activities and in doing so enabling a 360 degree review of real-time response resources.
DHS S&T RTS further adheres to the NIMS foundational model and provides end-users with a simple and easy to use interface for local resource management. The application is now offered for free as part of this website enabling emergency response organizations and Incident Commands bodies to see immediate improvement in coordinated resource management and sharing with the ability to capture and organize resources, emergency contacts, vendors, and more.