National Incident Management System | California Governor's Office of Emergency Services

What is the National Incident Management System (NIMS)?

The National Incident Management System (NIMS) provides a systematic, proactive approach to guide departments and agencies at all levels of government, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector to work seamlessly to prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of incidents, regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity, in order to reduce the loss of life and property and harm to the environment. The State of California adopted NIMS on February 8, 2005, by Executive Order S-2-05.

Annual NIMS Implementation Assessment

The annual NIMS Implementation Assessment provides the state a self-assessment to evaluate and report on California’s Operational Areas (OAs) and required State Agencies’ implementation of NIMS.

Upon FEMA’s release in June/July, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) begins providing the NIMS assessment to OAs and required State Agencies for completion and return. Cal OES compiles and aggregates the fourteen-question responses from each OA and required State Agencies to produce the State’s NIMS assessment. For assessment purposes, it is the sole discretion of the OAs to collect information from its sub-jurisdictions to roll into their totals, which Cal OES will use. Cal OES uploads final assessment totals to the FEMA Unified Reporting Tool (URT) to meet compliancy.

For more information, submit questions to SharedMail_NIMS@CalOES.ca.gov.

NIMS News:

On October 15, 2021, the 2021 National Incident Management System (NIMS) Implementation Assessment was sent out to all OAs (58), State agencies (22), and Cal OES internal partners (5). Responses were due on November 15, 2021.
The 2020 National Incident Management System (NIMS) Implementation Assessment has been successfully submitted to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on December 31, 2020.
The 2019 National Incident Management System (NIMS) Implementation Assessment has been successfully submitted to Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on December 26, 2019.

NIMS Integration Planning and Reporting

The NIMS reporting tool is a Microsoft Excel based self-assessment instrument developed by FEMA and designed for the emergency management community at the State, territorial, tribal, local government level to evaluate and report their jurisdiction’s achievement of all NIMS implementation activities released since 2004. The NIMS Data Collection Tool was developed to assist the nation’s emergency management community to comply with the NIMS requirements, as determined by the National Integration Center (NIC). The Homeland Security Presidential Directive-5 requires Federal Departments and agencies to make adoption of the NIMS by State and local organizations a condition for Federal preparedness assistance.

NIMS Resource and Training

One of the key components of compliance with NIMS and qualifier for Federal Preparedness Grant Funding is on-going training and credentialing. Displayed below are a number of different links and documents that will assist in identifying required training, locations providing training, and training plans.
For NIMS Training, please contact the California State Training Institute (CSTI).