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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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 New Version of UICDS - All the Features and Benefits - Topic of the UICDS Tutorial and Biweekly Call on Thursday at Noon
The UICDS Team announces the release of Version 1.2.1 on this week's UICDS Tutorial and Biweekly Call. This release is backward compatible but updates UICDS components, improves performance in off-nominal network environments, and aligns the UICDS AdminConsole with the Section 508 Amendment to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. In addition to these changes to the UICDS code base, we have also significantly simplified the UICDS installation procedures.
UICDS utilizes a series of open source components that evolve over time, incorporating the latest technologies, improving stability and performance as well as eliminating vulnerabilities to malicious viruses, etc. We have updated the UICDS core to operate with the latest version of these components, specifically Java JDK 1.7.0_5, Tomcat 7, eXist 1.4.2, OpenFire 3.7.1 and OpenDJ 2.5. It should be noted that OpenDJ is a direct descendent of the OpenDS LDAP which was part of the Oracle purchase of Sun Microsystems.
UICDS developers continue to improve UICDS performance in off-nominal environments. For V1.2.1, we have improved the robustness of UICDS core-to-core connectivity in the presence of intermittent network availability. These changes help ensure that UICDS Work Products are shared reliably between UICDS cores by incorporating several connection checking features.
In order to facilitate the administration of UICDS by people with disabilities, as guided by Section 508, the UICDS Team has incorporated text equivalent labels to AdminConsole elements and enabled keyboard-based access to the AdminConsole, among other enhancements.
Finally, and for some most importantly, the UICDS Team has significantly reduced the complexity of the UICDS installation process. UICDS developers have increased the functionality of the UICDS InstallKit batch file so that installation instructions have been reduced from 108 to 18 with a corresponding reduction in installation time and significantly fewer opportunities to inadvertently enter incorrect information.
 | | The UICDS InstallKit for version 1.2.1 creates a server component installation routine that greatly speeds the installation process. |
The entire release is backward compatible which means that external application connections made with UICDS by developers will all work with the current version. This release should have no impact on end-user installations - except for all the improvements noted above.
So come hear about the version strategy and the improvements for unstable network environments and other internal utility.
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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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| Quick Start to Incident Sharing Through UICDS Tutorial Now Available on UICDS Collaboration Portal
Where to begin with UICDS?
That's easy, now. Begin as you begin everyday, with the UICDS incident. Operationally, the Incident Work Product in UICDS is the beginning of the "UICDS Tree of Incident Knowledge." Technically, the Incident Work Product serves as a model for all the other work products - by and large, if you can manipulate the Incident Work Product you will have the ability to do most everything else in UICDS.
The last UICDS Tutorial and Biweekly Call was devoted to the Quick Start Guide to UICDS Incident Management Service and Incident Work Products. The guide is designed to let providers of incident management data efficiently map their data to the UICDS Incident Management Service in order to create, update, close, and archive incidents shared through UICDS.
Our call started with a conceptual framework for the development of information exchanges with UICDS. It then turned to references to example code that can be downloaded from the UICDS Distribution site. (The Distribution Site requires the appropriate access credentials that can be requested on www.UICDS.us by following the link to Get the UICDS Development Kit.)
The tutorial followed the guide and explained a number of different topics:
- Mapping to the UICDS NIEM Incident Work Product
- Incident Work Product Template for Required Data
- Creating a New Incident
- Posting the Work Product Using the Work Product Template to the Incident Management Service
- Viewing the Resulting Work Product Through the UICDS Console and Google Earth
- Understanding the UCore Digest process
- Best Practices for that Pesky "Other" Data
- Java Incident Management Service Example Code
- Dot Net Incident Management Service Example Code
The highlight of the tutorial was the session "So Easy Even A Social Scientist Can Do It" which demonstrated using the Incident Work Product template from the guide to edit and post an actual Incident Work Product. The work product was seen in the UICDS Console and then as a map location and data on Google Earth.
View the Quick Start Guide to UICDS Incidents Tutorial on the UICDS Collaboration Platform at UICDS.us.
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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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