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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.
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Watch
UICDS The Movie
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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. |
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. |
Follow UICDS on LinkedIn
UICDS is now on LinkedIn, the premier business-related social networking site. The site is self-described as the "unofficial UICDS discussion group" among Technology Providers and End-Users. To join the discussion group,  |
| UICDS Contacts
General Information
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™ is a Trademark of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security
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UICDS Update
An Information Sharing Technology Program from the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate
In this issue ...
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 Pandemic Decision-Support with UICDS: The University of Louisville Pilot is Topic for December 15 Biweekly Call and Tutorial at Noon
Robert Kelly of the University of Louisville will discuss the use of UICDS in the Real-Time Decision Support System (RTDSS) for Healthcare and Public Health Sector Protection. The project is a collaboration among several universities in Kentucky and Missouri with the support of the National Institute for Hometown Security and DHS Directorate of Science and Technology. The goal of the project is to develop a decision support system to provide pandemic response staff with decision support tools to assist them with managing the response.
The RTDSS consists of three primary components, the
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Information sharing flow for University of Louisville Pandemic Decision Support System using UICDS
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Pandemic Decision Support System (PanDSS), a Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) core, and third-party data sources. Complex interactions among hospital applications can be conducted through UICDS including multiple distributed applications that update a work product and notification services in which various systems are notified when changes to a work product have occurred.
Rob Kelley recently presented the results of this work to the First International Workshop on Healthcare Systems Engineering in Beijing, China.
The paper presented at the Healthcare Systems Engineering conference is available for you to review in advance of Rob's presentation by clicking here.
So join us on the UICDS Biweekly Call and Tutorial to hear, learn, and contribute.
To join the tutorial and our biweekly call:
Call 800-366-7242 and use code 735108 at noon ET.
Web Collaboration: www.saic.com/customer/datax/
Scroll to the bottom of the page and enter ...
Conference Reference: 601203
Attendee PIN: 1143
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New Five-Minute Video Shows a Dozen Technologies Sharing Through UICDS
At the Second Annual National Capital Region Interoperability Conference conducted by the All Hazards Consortium (AHC), we showed examples of numerous technologies sharing through UICDS all across the region. In the NCR, several individual pilots are taking place. This demonstration showed how those pilots could be joined together through UICDS sharing agreements into a complete, region-wide sharing network.
The technologies shown were, sometimes, the actual
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Demonstrating technology equivalents to operational systems using actual, but not current, data shared through UICDS
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applications used in jurisdictions across the region. In other cases, because of restricted access to the operational technologies, we showed the technical equivalent of the operational system.
The video shows, in just five minutes, how effectively a net of information sharing can be created through UICDS.
So, take a look at this quick video to see data shared from:
- Three different Computer-Aided Dispatch
- Four different incident management applications
- Three different GIS viewers
- IPAWS national warning system from FEMA
- ALOHA chemical dispersion model from EPA
- Traffic cameras
View the video on the UICDS Collaboration Portal.
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"SIMON and UICDS platforms are believed to represent a comprehensive collection of standards relevant to information gathering and sharing, as well as to interoperability."
Shane Mason and the team from SRI International (SRI) reported on their study of standards that included a look at UICDS. In the study, Shane reported, "We first present background information on the use and types of standards. Then, we describe both SIMON (Smart Integration Manager Ontologically Networked) and UICDS to create a basis of understanding for the use of standards in the development and design cycle of the two platforms."
The study was conducted as part of SRI's work on the Maritime Security Technology Pilot (MSTP) for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate. SRI analyzed the standards relationship between SIMON and UICDS. The study focused on 14 architectural standards, two schema types, and two transport protocols and their utility for emergency management information sharing.
In describing each platform, Shane said they "describe components, such as services, in detail to provide information about the use and incorporation of particular standards. We then present a use case describing potential integration between specific system instantiations of each platform as a basis for assessing the risk of such integration."
View the Standards Assessment Tutorial
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Looking Ahead - More Great UICDS Tutorials Coming Up This Winter
Put these dates and topics on your calendar. You won't want to miss these excellent discussions from some of the best experts in the field of information sharing and interoperability.
January 12: A Framework for Interoperability
John Contestible of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory explores why information sharing is important to successfully dealing with large scale events and how a lack of public safety communications systems interoperability is a major impediment. It describes how a conceptual framework of information layers (i.e. the Data, Integration and Presentation layers) is useful to developing solutions to the lack of interoperability. He further describes a concept of operations whereby Integration layer applications can form the core of a "Common Operating Picture" which can provide information to field personnel at the scene of an incident as well as the public. An inducement for jurisdictions to participate in such an information sharing framework is that they can gain access to wide array of information to which they would otherwise not be entitled and they can reduce the overall cost of such systems by sharing the infrastructure and system expenses across the regional partners.
January 26: Continuing the Discussion of Standards for Resource Management
Donald McGarry is a Senior Systems Engineer with the MITRE Corporation who supports MITRE's newly formed Federally Funded Research and Development Center for the Department of Homeland Security. In that capacity he has worked on the Emergency Response Domain data model and on showcasing the benefits of adoption of existing standards in the Emergency Response domain. Don is a voting member on the OASIS Emergency Management Technical Committee, Emergency Management Adoption Committee, and a number of subcommittees which have helped to drive the Emergency Data Exchange Language (EDXL) standards employed in UICDS. Don will be continuing our discussion of resource management through resource typing and resource schemas.
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| UICDS Mobile App Example Code Available for Android® and Apple®
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Become a UICDS Pilot - Yours from DHS
Tired of watching and want to get involved? Are you a government agency that knows you should share information better? Critical infrastructure owner/operator in need of coordination with governments? Technology provider who wants to better serve emergency management and response organizations?
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Use the UICDS Development Kit To Win Contracts that Require UICDS Compliance
Recently, the State of California and the State of West Virginia both issued requests for proposals that called for UICDS compliance as a condition of the contract. Feeling left behind?
Now there is a guide to what it means to "comply" with UICDS. Get the new UICDS Compliance Overview report to see the details. And you can see and listen to the UICDS Compliance Tutorial about compliance with UICDS v 1.1.1 on the UICDS Collaboration Portal.
If this is you ... and you don't want to be excluded from future bids ... just answer a few questions to get the UICDS Development Kit and example code to build your UICDS Adapter today. Get started by clicking here.
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