Some North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries will adopt the Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) announced today.
NICS is a first responder group (FRG) information sharing tool. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are applying the tool as part of NATO’s Science for Peace and Security (SPS) program. SPS funds collaborative projects between NATO members that focus on security research.
DHS, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL), and the U.S. Coast Guard created the NICS technology. Through the Web-based platform, first responders can share information and request and receive guidance from remote experts in real time. Experts can also use the system to observe an incident and offer relevant information as the situation unfolds. S&T recently made NICS available to emergency management agencies worldwide through GitHub.
“NATO’s use of NICS can help enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief worldwide,” stated a press release on S&T’s website. “DHS S&T also looks forward to learning from this implementation how innovative solutions like NICS can continue to improve these efforts.”
