With the vast number of local, state, tribal, federal and private-sector agencies involved in fire and emergency response, information systems are quite complex. Agencies collect and use information, but often through drastically different information-technology systems and sharing tools. How can users ensure that they can share this information across disparate systems?

The departments of Justice and Homeland Security launched the National Information Exchange Model, or NIEM, in 2005. Since that time, NIEM has been incorporated into information-sharing initiatives by 31 states and a variety of local and federal agencies, including: public safety, justice, homeland security, emergency management, maritime, immigration, infrastructure protection and international trade.

NIEM is meeting this “information interoperability” challenge by providing a common language nationwide for all-hazards and homeland-security operations. The NIEM common language, in turn, provides the basis for developing NIEM-conformant common exchange standards for information shared across the broad public safety, emergency and disaster management, justice, intelligence, and homeland security enterprises.

In addition to a common language and library of NIEM-conformant information-exchange standards, the model also provides:

• A framework, methodology and technical tools for collaborative development of information-exchange standards;
• Training, technical assistance and help-desk support for exchange standard developers and users; and
• A governance structure that encourages the active involvement and input of users and practitioners from all levels of government and industry.

Emergency-Service Projects

NIEM already is at work in a number of initiatives that affect fire and emergency services, including:

Public-Safety Data Interoperability Program. Funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance and co-managed by the IJIS Institute and the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, this initiative is focused on advancing standards-based information-sharing to support emergency communications and other relevant homeland-security domains.

The goal of the program's first project, the conversion of the External Alarm Interface Information Exchange Packet Documentation to the NIEM Version 2.0, is to improve the real-time information-sharing capabilities in the emergency-response environment. This includes development of high-value information exchanges (IEPDs) related to local communication centers and public-safety answering points. An IEPD is a set of data artifacts used to support the sharing of data for a particular business purpose or, more simply, the framework on which the actual information exchange is built.

The purpose of the External Alarm Interface IEPD is to provide a standard data exchange for electronically transmitting information between an alarm-monitoring company and a PSAP. There are three primary uses for this IEPD: initial notification of an alarm event, bidirectional update of status and bidirectional update of other events.

The External Alarm IEPD has been in development since 2004, and has been tested extensively through partnerships with APCO, the York County (Va.) Emergency Communications Division, The Richmond (Va.) Department of Information Technology and Police Department's Division of Emergency Communications, the Central Station Alarm Association, and Vector Security.

More than 5,000 alarm exchanges have been transmitted between Vector Security and the two Virginia PSAPs in the two years of operation. These exchanges resulted in:

• 5,000 fewer telephone calls to the two PSAPs, eliminating the need for the alarm-monitoring company operator to converse with the PSAP call-taker.
• Elimination of miscommunication between the alarm-company operator and the PSAP call-taker.
• A significant decrease in response times to alarm-related calls for service, with an increase in law-enforcement apprehensions made and lives saved, and more quickly extinguished fires.

Intelligent Transportation Systems and Public Safety Information Exchange Project. Emergencies demand effective communication of information between public safety and transportation agencies responding to any situation, but the absence of a uniform approach for data-sharing remains a barrier. To fill this void, the Intelligent Transportation Systems and Public Safety Information Exchange Project established a standards-based approach to critical information exchange. The benefits include:

• Faster exchange of information,
• Increased accuracy of information exchanged,
• Cost savings by using the same exchanges with a variety of agencies,
• Better and more efficient use of personnel,
• Shortened response times,
• Faster clearance of events,
• Improved responder safety, and
• Enhanced public mobility due to reduced congestion and faster clearance.

By facilitating faster and better communications, this project will enhance daily operations and help ensure more immediate, safe and effective response to routine incidents, natural disasters, terrorist acts, and other major incidents. Public-safety and transportation agencies will have more accurate and timely information to perform their roles, and the public will be better served in times of emergency.

Hospital Info

DHS is realizing a number of information-sharing successes using NIEM that affect the fire and emergency service community. For instance, its Directorate for Science and Technology is leveraging NIEM on several projects:

Hospital Availability Exchange (HAVE) specifications allow the communication of the status of a hospital and its resources to other emergency agencies, including bed capacity and availability, emergency department status, available service coverage, and status of a hospital's facility and operations.

Resource messaging specifications allow for the communication of a suite of standard messages for data-sharing among emergency and other information systems that deal in requesting and providing emergency equipment, supplies, people and teams.

The development of an IEPD that enables information-exchange to research, test and evaluate different means of validating first responder attributes in local communities for credentialing purposes.

Several IEPDs related to the exchange of NIMS information, such as situation assessment, resource-typing and incident reports. These IEPDs ultimately will improve the interoperability between emergency operating centers and local communities.

DHS continues to integrate NIEM into other projects and existing information-sharing initiatives. For example, the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) is a simple format for exchanging all-hazard emergency alerts and public warnings over all kinds of networks. It allows a consistent warning message to be disseminated simultaneously over many different warning systems, thus increasing warning effectiveness while simplifying the warning task.

CAP also facilitates the detection of emerging patterns in local warnings of various kinds, which could indicate an undetected hazard or hostile act. While the current version of the protocol does not use NIEM, DHS has committed to working with the Oasis Emergency Management Technical Committee to ensure all future version of the CAP will be NIEM-conformant.

Meanwhile, FEMA is using NIEM in the Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program to facilitate scheduling and synchronizing of exercises; developing, prioritizing, tracking and analyzing corrective actions following exercises and real-world events; and developing a standard information-exchange for the collection of exercise evaluation and outcome data.

Dispatch Specific

There are a variety of projects at local and state levels aimed at using NIEM in CAD-to-CAD exchanges and in exchanges involving CAD systems and other information systems. A great example is the IEPD being developed by the National Capital Region encompassing the District of Columbia and parts of Maryland and Virginia.

In 2005, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' Chief Information Officers Committee established the NCR Interoperability Program, a regional initiative to create digital networks and systems interoperability for public safety and emergency response using funding from the Urban Area Security Initiative Grant Program. The objective of the program was to establish the technology architecture needed across the region to strengthen the flow of information between emergency support functions.

As part of the regional interoperability infrastructure, a data-exchange hub was created to act as a switching station of sorts to provide secure, non-commercial, restricted access to critical regional communications systems, and applications to facilitate real time, anytime interoperable data communications.

The NCR is developing four NIEM-conformant IEPDs. One is the Computer-Aided Dispatch Data Exchange. The fire departments of the city of Alexandria, Arlington County and Fairfax County — signatories of the Northern Virginia (NoVA) Emergency Services Mutual Response Memorandum of Agreement — have been operating as one department in the use of resources since the early 1970s.

Over time, the NoVA agreement has been amended to encompass virtually all fire suppression, EMS and command units. Currently, all requests for resources across jurisdictions are handled manually (verbally by dedicated telephone lines), with one jurisdiction's communication center having to call another to determine resource availability. If a resource is available, it belongs to the requesting jurisdiction for the specific call for service. Once availability is confirmed via phone, incident information (address, incident type, zone box, radio channel, units) is exchanged and verified, and the actual dispatch occurs. This method adds one to two minutes to the time necessary to dispatch the unit(s) closest to an incident and delays response times.

The NER's data exchange IEPD standardizes and streamlines the sharing of data between disparate CAD systems. Implementing interoperability between these systems reduces dispatch times, improves response times and results in better service to citizens.

Another example of information-sharing is the National Institute for Science and Technology project entitled “Building Information Exchange with First Responders.” The objective of this project is to enable secure, real-time communication of building system information to emergency responders and to allow emergency control of building systems by developing an information-exchange architecture, data taxonomy, standards and performance measures.

Modern buildings can support vast amount of static and real-time data that can be used for emergency scenarios. For example, real-time sensors — that monitor temperature, smoke, motion, lighting, doors, elevators, various HVAC controllers and electrical information — and video cameras, are readily available, as is static information such as building floor plans and hazmat information, which can be made available to responders.

This project will focus on providing reliable and accurate building system information to emergency responders to minimize call-processing and assessment times, as well as minimize injuries to firefighters and civilians. Development and testing is expected to be completed, along with standards committee agreement, by 2012.

Future of Info Exchange

Information-sharing is changing the way that fire and emergency services do the great work that gets done every day. As a complement to that information-sharing, NIEM is making great strides in the public-safety, justice and homeland-security arenas. While a discussion of information-sharing standards may not be glamorous or exciting, the awesome power that information can have over the outcome of an emergency incident cannot be overstated.

Imagine a single incident where a company officer, using an apparatus-mounted MDT, interfaces with a building alarm system, locates the building area involved and notices a spread as other devices begin to activate. Taking a crew into the safest access point for the building not only keeps the crew protected, but gets them to the seat of the fire faster and gets the job done quicker. Imagine the time saved when a building alarm is received immediately by a PSAP and emergency units are dispatched quickly, even across jurisdictional lines, based on real-time information available at a dispatcher's fingertips.

Paul Wormeli is the executive director of the IJIS Institute and the co-chair of the National Information Exchange Model Communications and Outreach Committee. Andrea A. Walter is a communications specialist for the IJIS Institute with more than 19 years of field experience in the fire and emergency services. For more information, visit NIEM's Web site.