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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 Lawrence Skelly 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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 Forming the Dot Mil UICDS User Group: A New Collaboration for Military and Military-Civilian UICDS Implementation is Topic of the UICDS Tutorial and Biweekly Call on Thursday at Noon
The interface between military and civilian organizations during large-scale emergencies continues to be a critical one. National Guard and regular military become involved in emergency response when the need exceeds local civilian capabilities. This occurs in formal activations as well as when military personnel act as good citizens supporting their neighbors.
Information sharing between military and civilian emergency response organizations and among emergency responders is critical to the successful support of the operation by military equipment and personnel. As a result, UICDS has been the middleware selected by several military organizations and has been the subject of investigation by many others.
This Thursday's UICDS Tutorial and Biweekly Call will be the kick-off of a new Dot Mil UICDS User Group.
Anyone will be welcome on the Dot Mil calls, but their focus will be on military implementation of UICDS and military-civilian collaboration through UICDS.
After this kick-off call, the Dot Mil User Group calls will take place bimonthly until more frequent calls are requested by the group. Topics will focus on those of special interest to the military. Presentations will be exclusively by and about military and military-civilian use of UICDS. Each call we will get an update on operational pilot experiences, the DIACAP process, and technologies of special interest to the military.
All the calls will be recorded and the video of presentations and discussions will be available the UICDS.us Collaboration Portal for on-demand viewing by everyone.
For background on the implementation of UICDS in military and military - civilian settings, take a look at the following UICDS Tutorial recordings:
View the Mobile Computing Application Platform (MCAP) application of UICDS to Military-Civilian Interoperability Tutorial.
View the tutorial on the Civil Support Task List: Bringing Military and Civilian Capabilities to Improve Preparedness.
View DOD-to-Civilian Information Sharing Using UICDS by the United States Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC).
Tell your colleagues about this exciting new military-civilian focus in UICDS Tutorials and Calls.
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Join the UICDS Tutorial and Biweekly Call on Thursday at Noon ET
Call: 800-366-7242 code 735108
You can join the online meeting from your PC or mobile device.
Web Collaboration: Click here.
... If requested, enter your name and email address.
... If a password is required, enter the meeting password: uicds2012
... Click "Join."
If you must manually enter the URL into your browser, select the UICDS Biweekly Call and use the password above when you link to:
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| California Earthquake Clearinghouse UICDS Technology Showcase Tutorial Now Available on UICDS Collaboration Portal
In our most recent tutorial we heard about how the California Earthquake Clearinghouse took advantage of the opportunity of the 2012 Golden Guardian earthquake exercise to conduct a parallel Technology Showcase of UICDS information sharing.
The Technology Showcase included four UICDS Cores shared among seven federal and state agencies to share incident and field observation information. Twelve applications - sensors, web applications and mobile apps - were used by 100 scientists, engineers, and responders to record 177 observations and reports about incidents unfolding in the three-hour exercise.
The focus of the exercise was on sharing incident information from reports and sensors as well as potential damage locations with scientists and engineers in the field to obtain their observations on the state of the earthquake and share them through UICDS.
Mobile apps developed by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute provided field observations from engineers. The U.S. Geological Survey developed Field Notes, a mobile app for earth scientists and geologists to report on their findings following an earthquake event. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory provided satellite imagery for the California Geological Survey to perform image analysis to suggest physical changes after the earthquake which were shared through UICDS. The FiRST Testbed at the University of California, Santa Barbara, simulated Caltrans road sensors in the earthquake area.
Three UICDS commercial technology providers delivered their applications for the use of the exercise participants. The UISOL Utility Outage Dashboard tracked UICDS incidents related to utilities, SkyLine Network Solutions provided live, dynamic links to CA Department of Transportation traffic cameras in the simulated earthquake area, and SpotOnResponse allowed participants to make field observations and associate photos or videos with UICDS incidents.
View the Golden Guardian UICDS Technology Clearinghouse conducted by the California Earthquake Clearinghouse UICDS Tutorial.
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Great Upcoming Tutorials this Summer
Watch this spot for new tutorials planned for the summer ...
Mobile App Field Observations
Moving information from the field - especially from mobile apps - is a new frontier for emergency management. But with the abundance of handheld devices today, and the advent of social media taking pictures and making postings throughout an incident, UICDS is leading the way on this new form of information sharing. This tutorial focuses on field observations and the use of the Sensor Observation Service (SOS). In short, "human sensors" provide an extraordinary view of an incident. Whether formally involved in data collection using a field investigation tool or informally involved in crowd-sourced data submitted by individuals, the UICDS SOS is the ideal place to store observations and associate them with incidents. This tutorial will describe Best Practices for using the SOS format for all the updates provided by the "human sensors" in the field.
Getting the UICDS Accreditation for Operation on Highly Security Networks
UICDS recently received the Authority To Operate (ATO) on one of the Department of Homeland Security secure networks. This Certification and Accreditation (C&A) process delved deep into the inner workings and code of UICDS and into the implementation policies and procedures. UICDS passed with flying colors, in part because development follows the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Level 3. The CMMI is a process improvement maturity model for the development of products and services created by Carnegie Mellon University for the Department of Defense certification for which is now managed by the Software Engineering Institute. It consists of best practices that address development and maintenance activities that cover the product lifecycle. Join us to learn more about the C&A process and how UICDS achieved this important accomplishment.
UICDS Self-Demo
This tutorial will provide you with all the information you need to see what UICDS can do. This is live data being consumed by a UICDS Core from several different applications. You will be able to actually use a number of applications to see the data and interact with it. Thanks to the wonderful participation of some of the UICDS Technology Providers, you will be able to use live versions of their software to see UICDS data. These include a video aggregation application, mobile apps, a utility outage response application, plus commonly available geospatial visualization tools like Google Earth. So join us for this tutorial and walk away with the ability to use UICDS at your desk or on your phone.
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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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