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UICDS keeps you better informed so you can make better decisions. UICDS is information sharing middleware for NIMS incident management that continuously receives and shares standardized data among many agencies during an incident. Your everyday application gets from UICDS exactly the data you need to use, visualize, process, improve, decide, and then share back through UICDS to keep everyone informed.
Because UICDS is middleware, there is no new user interface to learn, no cost to obtain it, and you retain complete control over your data. You get notified when an agency has provided new or updated incident data and you share your data with whom you want instantaneously and in the background without any disruption to your operation.
With UICDS you are better informed, your partners are better informed, and together you all make better response decisions. |
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 manageincidents. 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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Get UICDS Free from the Department of Homeland Security
Apply to be a UICDS Pilot and get your own complete UICDS installation, including support, to improve your information sharing. Make your request now. |
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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UICDS Update
Special Edition - The Year in Review 2010 In this issue ...
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 Why UICDS? Your UICDS Value Proposition UICDS keeps you better informed so you can make better decisions. UICDS is information sharing middleware for NIMS incident management that continuously receives and shares standardized data among many agencies during an incident. Your everyday application gets from UICDS exactly the data you need to use, visualize, process, improve, decide, and then share back through UICDS to keep everyone informed.
Because UICDS is middleware, there is no new user interface to learn, no cost to obtain it, and you retain complete control over your data. You get notified when an agency has provided new or updated incident data and you share your data with whom you want instantaneously and in the background without any disruption to your operation.
With UICDS you are better informed, your partners are better informed, and together you all make better response decisions.
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UICDS Compliance Required in California Emergency Management Agency Procurement and State of West Virginia Contracts The California Emergency Management Agency issued Request for Proposal RIMS # 0609-20 on December 15, 2010 becoming the latest state to cite UICDS compliance as a requirement for an incident management software procurement. As stated in the RFP, "The system must interface with the Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS)interface technology provided by the United States Department of Homeland Security to ensure integration of disparate systems."  The California RFP is due on March 31, 2011 and cites as its purpose "to replace and implement a response information management system (RIMS) that integrates decentralized information from various local and state agencies as well as the private sector, to provide California Emergency Management Agency (Cal EMA) and its partners timely and accurate situational intelligence and strategic management decision capabilities for all types of emergency situations."
The California Emergency Management Agency procurement is called Response Information Management System (RIMS) RFP RIMS 0690-20 and is available on BidSynch™ (which you can register to use at no cost) by following this link.
Earlier in the year, the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety awarded 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 West Virginia project is to provide a prototype Modeling 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.
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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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UICDS Tutorials Provide Guidance and Example Code Gives a "Jump Start" for UICDS Conformance
Since the release of UICDS Version 1, every two weeks the UICDS Team has hosted a UICDS Tutorial. The topics of the tutorials are focused on either End-User Pilot participants, such as governments and critical infrastructure owner/operators or Technology Providers who support them. And sometimes both groups. All the UICDS Tutorials are part of the UICDS Biweekly Calls held every other Thursday. Each is recorded and available on the UICDS On-Demand Portal. The most recent tutorials currently available on the portal are: - Installing UICDS Core and Example Code
- Getting Started with UICDS Parts 1 and 2
- Working with Example Code
- IT Security and Access Control
- Three Pilot Planning Concepts
- iAsk UICDS Issue Tracking
All the tutorials are open to you for collaboration on the UICDS website www.UICDS.us and follow the link to login for Technology Providers or for Pilot Collaboration for end-users in government or industry.
If you don't have your username/password for the UICDS video collaboration platform, get one quickly by clicking on the appropriate link below:
Answer a few questions and you'll get access to collaboration and the UICDS Installation Kit whenever you want it. |
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UICDS Video Shows Real-Time Traffic Information Sharing in Richmond
In the fall, we did a short video that could have been called, Seven Minutes in the Life of UICDS. The video is a real-time capture with some narration of what was happening in Richmond, Virginia ... live. The Richmond traffic data on real-time accidents is provided to a UICDS Core from which it is shared to other UICDS Cores and to a number of applications. This short video depicts what it looks like to share information through UICDS.
Now, please don't expect grand theater. But this real-time video of information sharing gives you a great overview of how UICDS works in the real world. You will see the start of traffic incidents with Computer-Aided Dispatch and follow the accident data through the UICDS Core to several other applications.
Our thanks again to the following UICDS Technology Providers for sharing their applications:
- City of Richmond for its Traffic website
- Environmental Protection Agency for its ALOHA™
- ESI™ for its WebEOC™
- Google™ for its Google Earth™
- Image Matters™ for its Alert Smarts™
- Intergraph™ for its Computer-Aided Dispatch
- NC4™ for its ETeam™ and Mission Center™
- ObjectFX™ for its ObjectFX™
- Patriot Data Solutions Group for its Vigilys™
- SAIC™ for its EMSe™
- U.S. Army for the Command Post of the Future
To see the short video, click here. |
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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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A Look at Three UICDS Pilot Deployment Planning Concepts
One of our regular UICDS Biweekly Calls featured three pilots in their planning stage. The overview was designed to give other potential UICDS Pilot locations an idea of what to expect from a UICDS Pilot and what you need to do to get involved.
The call addressed (a) what is being shared, (b) the technologies and applications sharing data through UICDS, and (c) the technical features of UICDS Core location and agreements. You can hear the session on the UICDS collaboration portal. When the session is over, those considering becoming a UICDS Pilot should be able to say "I'll use this application and that application to share this kind of data so these agencies can see these results."
The call focused on prospective UICDS Pilot locations and the Technology Providers who support them. You can hear the recording and see the presentation slides for pilots in:
- Boston, Massachusetts and the Boston UASI Area UICDS Pilot plans
- State of Maryland Emergency Management Agency UICDS Pilot plans
- West Virginia State Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management Modeling and Simulation UICDS Pilot plans
Each of the pilots has an initial stage of deployment designed to illustrate the capabilities of UICDS in the pilot community. The second phase of the UICDS Pilots moves to limited operational use among applications intended to provide immediate benefits. The third phase is an ever-expanding growth to include all potential agencies and jurisdictions and their various technology applications.
The recording and presentation materials are now available on the UICDS Collaboration Platform. Or go to Login - Pilot Collaboration thenTopic 1, UICDS Tutorials and Biweekly Calls, and follow to the December 2nd call, Three Pilot Planning Concepts. |
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UICDS Featured in Geospatial Intelligence Forum Article, Standards and Incident Command
"Standards and Incident Command" is an excellent review by geospatial professionals of how UICDS handles geospatial information sharing. The article appears in the September issue of Geospatial Intelligence Forum which is the official publication of the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation (USGIF). USGIF is the only organization dedicated to promoting the geospatial intelligence tradecraft and building a stronger community of interest across industry, academia, government, professional organizations and individual stakeholders. The group is the sponsor of the GEOINT conferences which are the definitive meetings on geospatial intelligence.
The focus of the article is how "Open Geospatial Consortium standards have helped overcome obstacles to DHS Unified Incident Command and Decision Support program." The author, Steven Ramage, highlights the role of many standards in UICDS but focuses on how the established Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards provided a "jump start" to the project.
The UICDS Map Service allows GIS applications to interact with a UICDS Core to manage map-related resources.
This UICDS model is based on the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Context specification. This allows the service to define Layers based on the OGC Web Feature Service and Maps based on the OGC Web Mapping Service. The UICDS Map Service supports operations to create, retrieve, update and delete map work products in UICDS.
You can read the digital issue of Geospatial Intelligence Forum and the UICDS article which begins on page 26. |
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UICDS Around the Country in Conferences and Presentations
The UICDS Team has been active throughout the year introducing UICDS in more than 20 webinars and numerous in-person presentations. Among the organizations that have participated in a UICDS presentation are:
- International Association of Emergency Managers
- International Association of Fire Chiefs
- National Emergency Management Association
- National Emergency Numbers Association
- All Hazards Consortium
- NORTHCOM
- MODSIM World Conference & Expo
- U.S. Army North
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
- Applied Science Foundation for Homeland Security
- Central United States Earthquake Consortium
If your organization would like to learn more about UICDS, please contact Jim Morentz, UICDS Outreach Director, to arrange a webinar or presentation at your conference. |
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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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