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UICDS is the "middleware foundation" that enables information sharing and decision support among commercial, government, and academic incident management technologies used to support the National Response Framework (NRF) and the National Incident Management System (NIMS), including the Incident Command System (ICS), in order to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from natural, technological, and terrorist events. |
| Why you received this UICDS Update Special Edition
You can be part of UICDS. Pilot locations are being selected now. This is your chance to solve that pesky problem of not sharing information with other agencies and jurisdictions. UICDS can bring you a step closer to the great emergency management program you want to build for your community. So, begin by reading more about being a UICDS Pilot and then contact us to get started. |
UICDS Contacts
info@uicds.dhs.gov
DHS S&T Program Manager Michael B. Smith Email Now DHS S&T Program Support Tomi` Finkle Email Now UICDS Project Manager Chip Mahoney Email Now UICDS Outreach Director James W. Morentz, Ph.D. Email Now |
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In this issue ...
- Learn All About UICDS Interoperability Middleware in Just Two Minutes
- UICDS Compliance Required in State of West Virginia Contract
- UICDS Demonstration Conducted at Picatinny Arsenal
- Invitation to Become a UICDS Pilot
- Join more than 150 UICDS Technology Providers
- Anticipation ... UICDS Helps You Turn Data into Knowledge
- The Biweekly UICDS Calls - Your Way to be Informed
- Use the UICDS Collaboration Portal
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Learn All About UICDS Interoperability Middleware in Just Two Minutes
Your time is valuable, so here it is in a nutshell. UICDS is middleware to share information among applications used by all levels of government and critical infrastructure to manage incidents. UICDS has no end-user interface, so there is no training or new applications to buy. You should care about UICDS if you manage emergencies or provide technologies to those who manage emergencies. Click here for a two minute video introduction of UICDS from the UICDS.us website. |
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UICDS Compliance Required in State of West Virginia Contract
The West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety recently completed the competitive award of a contract that required UICDS compliance as a condition of award and delivery of the resulting project. The Request for Proposals stated: "The data layer for this M&S Capability shall be UICDS Compliant."
The purpose of the contract was to provide a prototype Model and Simulation (M&S) capability for Consequence Management for the Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program stakeholders (West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia and Virginia). Should a major event occur in the Washington metropolitan area, the severity of impacts and implications for the entire region could be significant. Dependent upon the nature of the situation, evacuation routes, medical aid, critical resources such as water and fuel, and other infrastructure in West Virginia could become greatly stressed or overwhelmed if not managed effectively through good situation understanding, dynamic simulation assessment and effective decision support. The contract was awarded to Azimuth, Inc. of Morgantown, WV. Joe Belt, of Azimuth, is leading a team that has become one of the UICDS Technology Providers and is actively engaged in developing UICDS Adapters to consume data for models and provide model results through the UICDS geospatial standards. The prototype Modeling and Simulation capability will provide the functionality to allow decision makers to plan and run simulations in preparation for a large-scale catastrophic event taking place in the National Capital Region. |
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UICDS Demonstration Conducted by Army Armament Research Development and Engineering Center at Picatinny Arsenal
The Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, the Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), and Rutgers University conducted a technology demonstration of UICDS at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey on September 9th. They demonstrated the UICDS middleware to show how it enables information sharing among homeland security technologies developed by commercial, government, and academic organizations. The demonstration had the specific goal of using UICDS data exchange standards and industry best practices to improve our ability to prevent, protect, respond, and recover from all types of natural, technological, and terrorist incidents.
The UICDS demonstration was conducted in the EOC of Picatinny Arsenal |
The demonstration showed a portion of the 200 organizations now participating in UICDS by employing the UICDS Development Kit and sample code to implement interfaces to their applications. Among the applications integrated through UICDS were:
- Eteam™ from NC4
- IRRIS™ from GeoDecisions
- WebEOC™ from ESI911
- ESA Portal™ from NC4
- ESRI COP™ from Environmental Systems Research Institute
- Google Earth™ from Google
- CPOF, Command Post of the Future from the Army Battle Command Systems
- FBCB2, Force XXI Battle Comand Brigade and Below from the Army Battle Command Systems
- WebPuff from the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program
- JSIF, Joint Situational Awareness Interoperability Framework from ARDEC
- RDDB, Resource Directory Database from the State of New Jersey
- iTeam, Information Technology for Emergency Management from Rutgers University Center for Information Management, Integration, and Connectivity
The Demonstration included three tightly focused scenario vignettes involving CBRNE type incidents occurring in the Eastern United States. The configuration for the demonstration connected multiple applications to a UICDS Core that shares data between the New Jersey State Emergency Operations Center and other agencies in FEMA Regions I-IV that are operating in a data fusion role for CBRNE incident management. The demonstration showed how UICDS could enable applications to automatically generate response activities and identify needed resources to help incident commanders at the appropriate echelons of local, state, or federal agencies. The demonstration included applications from the National Guard, Multi-state Fusion Centers, and County Level First Responder Agencies.
The demonstration displayed the effectiveness of using UICDS by allowing disparate emergency management applications to interoperate. Demonstration conducted using four scenario vignettes:
- Multi-agency Common Operating Picture (COP)
- Resource Messaging
- Chemical Release
- Event Correlation
The demonstration audience consisted of federal, state, and local government officials |
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You are Invited to Become a UICDS Pilot - Governments, Critical Infrastructure, Voluntary Organizations
Are you a government agency? Critical infrastructure owner/operator? Technology provider to emergency management and response organizations? Then answer a few questions and you can apply to be a UICDS Pilot.
UICDS makes the investment you have made in technology more valuable. Information systems talk to each other with UICDS. This gives you better information than you have ever had before. Data about an incident from other agencies is suddenly at your fingertips. And you provide to them access to everything needed to better manage a response. Now, different application data works together so different agencies work together better.
This year more than 100 places around the country will be selected as UICDS Pilots Areas. A pilot area is one or more jurisdictions or agencies that install a UICDS Core and interface multiple applications to share information. This could be police departments in several neighboring counties, or in a single city or town the police, fire, emergency medical, emergency management, public works, and other responder agencies. It can be a state and its counties. Or even a cluster of states. Or a mix of governments and critical infrastructure owner/operators. The peer-to-peer architecture of UICDS accommodates any configuration that the responder community needs to get the job done. To learn more about the "what" and "how" of becoming a UICDS pilot click the link to get the document Becoming a UICDS Pilot. |
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More than 150 Technology Providers Approved for UICDS Development Kit - Get Yours Now
UICDS Technology Providers are companies, governments, universities, and voluntary organizations that have developed and deployed a technology to help in incident management. This includes software, sensors, hardware, video. It includes management, operations, tactical response. It includes technologies to support fire, police, emergency medical, emergency management, public works, healthcare, critical infrastructure, utilities, transportation, and many more disciplines.
If you have developed a technology for which sharing data can add value, UICDS is for you.
How do you get involved in UICDS?
It all begins with the UICDS Development Kit. The DevKit contains an entire UICDS Core plus sample code that you can freely use to build an adapter for your technology. The UICDS Adapter (a) connects and authenticates your application to the UICDS Core web services in order to share data and (b) consumes a fraction of your application's data and translates it into standard data formats for sharing with other applications across UICDS.
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Anticipate! - UICDS Helps You Turn Data into Knowledge for Every Incident
How do you get ahead of an emergency?
It starts with not having to seek information. It starts with having the right information delivered to the right decision-makers all the time.
Yet that critical information is generated from many sources - different departments and agencies - using many different applications. So how to make sense of the jumble of information?
UICDS. UICDS starts with an incident generated in an application - Computer-Aided Dispatch, incident management, sensors, alerting software. Whatever you have that will be your first source of an unfolding incident.
Then, UICDS notifies all the other applications about the incident with whom you have agreements to share information and launches a series of data exchanges that give you the whole picture.
The accompanying diagram helps you envision how UICDS lets you ANTICIPATE! No searching for incident information from different agencies. UICDS organizes information into an incident "tree of knowledge" that tells you:
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Applications create an Incident Work Product in UICDS by using their preferred message format
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UICDS notifies other applications with a UCore Digest of the incident (or update) plus details to obtain the work product
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UICDS creates an Incident Command Work Product to follow the "who" and "how"
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UICDS creates a Map Work Product to represent "where" and build a picture of the surrounding features
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UICDS provides and consumes CAP alerts
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Sensor applications can contribute with video, chem-bio, flood, whatever sensor is available to help explain the incident
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Tasking and dispatch applications assign jobs to people and units
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Resource applications use EDXL-RM to request and commit resources and EDXL-DE for routing
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The Incident Action Plan is created from ICS Forms describing "what" will be done
That is the knowledge-based wth to ANTICIPATE the most effective response, avoid gaps, apply resources, and communicate direction.
UICDS gives you comprehensive knowledge about an incident by making different applications work together so different agencies work together better. |
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UICDS Biweekly Calls - Your Way to Stay Informed
Every two weeks, the UICDS Team hosts the UICDS "Open Mic" call. This is your chance to meet with the UICDS technical team to get your questions answered ... and to share your thoughts and comments with everyone as well.
Join your colleagues every other Thursday at noon ET on 800-366-7242 code 735108. To find out the exact dates for the UICDS Biweekly Calls, check out the UICDS Calendar.
Remember, whether you are a government agency or a technology provider, this is the place to get your questions answered about technical development, user implementations, and the UICDS Pilot Areas. So join the call and find out how UICDS can improve information sharing in your community, region, state, or critical infrastructure. |
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Use the UICDS Collaboration Portal
The UICDS Collaboration Portal is a dynamic way to obtain all the technical information needed to excel in your creation of your UICDS Adapter. The collaboration portal includes video instruction, slides, and threaded discussions to which you can continually add comments and receive updates from the UICDS Team and from your fellow Technology Providers. Whether part of the live biweekly calls or on demand when you need information or want to ask questions, the UICDS Collaboration Portal is your source for UICDS information.
The portal can be reached from www.UICDS.us under the heading Log-in Technology Providers. Access to the technical information and discussions of the portal comes to you when you apply for the UICDS Development Kit on the link Get the UICDS Development Kit. |
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