According to NYC Emergency Management (2017), the Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS) is a well-established management process in New York City for dealing with emergencies, incidents, and planned events. It specifies duties, responsibilities, and authority for the city, state, and other government organizations conducting and supporting emergency response. It also gives the city a structure for managing emergencies that necessitate coordinated actions across several city departments. For instance, CIMS aids in defining an incident, the life safety actions that must be carried out, the investigation operations, and the recovery and restoration operations. This paper explores how CIMS helps NYC deal with disasters and the extent to which it works.
How CIMS Help NYC Deal With Disasters
The Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS) establishes and identifies the agencies in charge of the entire incident as a command element. The command element is the agency in charge of making decisions, identifying objectives, and allocating resources during an incident. It determines which city agency will respond and whether the single or unified command will manage the incident based on the incident category. For example, in the instance of a fire in New York City, the New York Fire Department will be the command agency. In contrast, other agencies may assist in rescue operations, such as the New York Police Department, to secure the perimeter and reroute traffic. On the other hand, the Department of Buildings may be able to assist with the evacuation or safety of a structure. On the other hand, a water break situation might be an example of unified command, with the NYPD, FDNY, and DEP acting as the unified command element to make unified objectives, strategic decisions, and resource requests.
NYC Emergency Management (2017) shows that the Citywide Incident Management System also assists in defining agency roles by providing critical competencies in their relevant areas of knowledge. It allows agencies to focus their response to the New York catastrophic occurrence based on their functional area of competence. For example, the Building department’s core competencies include structural damage assessment, construction, and building re-occupancy, while the Sanitation department’s key competencies include debris management and snow removal.
Does it Work?
The Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS) is effective in New York City when addressing and managing the current situation. However, it does not specify the roles of the private sector, the general public, private organizations, and non-governmental organizations in the event of a disaster. The incident command based on the agency’s core competencies will be responsible for giving tactical directions and the overall management of an incident regarding the mitigation measures of the incident. The Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS), administered by the New York Emergency Management Agency, assists New York City in dealing with disasters by ensuring that the CIMS command structure is in place throughout disaster response and that inter-agency cooperation is maintained. CIMS provides a structured structure to the New York Emergency Management Agency that ensures an effective, efficient, and coordinated response to catastrophes when several agencies are involved (NYC Emergency Management, 2017). It also specifies how incident operations, such as life safety, investigation, site management, and recovery/restoration, are prioritized and when they can be carried out simultaneously. Establishes a procedure for reviewing and critiquing emergency responses after they have occurred and putting lessons learned into practice.
Conclusion
The Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS) is a disaster management technology that provides a thoughtful response to a disaster by ensuring proper coordination of all concerned agencies in carrying out their mandated responsibilities to mitigate the disaster. The CIMS is entirely reliant on the New York Emergency Department to coordinate response through the CIMS’s stated framework.
Reference
NYC Emergency Management (2017). Citywide Incident Management System. https://youtu.be/rPJklTgS60U
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