Unified Incident Command and Decision Support

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently launched a website to promote its Unified Incident Command and Decision Support (UICDS) software. Under development by SAIC since 2009, UICDS is intended to be a "middleware" data sharing program. As described at the UICDS home page, the intent of the effort is as follows:

"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."

To learn more, go here.


Comment: It seems as though that at any moment in time, the Department of Homeland Security has more than a few of these information sharing technology development efforts underway.   Often, as is the case with UICDS, geospatial is a big piece of the puzzle.   Yet, to date, robust geospatial information sharing remains an elusive goal for the Emergency Services Sector.   Hopefully, UICDS will be able to help change that landscape going forward.