On May 14, 2004, Mayor Bloomberg and OEM announced the City's adoption of the Citywide Incident Management System (CIMS) as the City's program for responding to and recovering from emergencies, and for managing planned events.
On April 11, 2005, Mayor Bloomberg signed an executive order formally mandating its implementation. Since then, OEM has worked closely with City agencies to adapt training programs for personnel involved in the City's incident command and emergency response program to reflect the CIMS protocol.
What is CIMS?
CIMS establishes roles and responsibilities and designates authority for City, state, and other government entities, and nonprofit and private sector organizations performing and supporting emergency response.
The CIMS Protocol is New York City's implementation of the National Incident Management System (NIMS). NIMS compliance is a requirement for future federal domestic preparedness funding for local governments. While CIMS has been developed to address New York City's unique incident management requirements, its full compliance with NIMS ensures compatibility with incident command systems in use in other states and federal agencies. CIMS is also designed to be scalable, facilitating the integration of additional organizations, such as private sector and nonprofit entities.
CIMS Key Components:
- Defines how citywide emergencies or multiple large-scale incidents will be managed
- Defines agency roles and responsibilities at emergency incidents
- Establishes the NIMS Incident Command System (ICS) standard as NYC's incident management system
- Defines the ICS organizational structure
- Establishing means of integrating regional, state, and federal agencies into a NYC response
- Describes the operational implementation of CIMS
- Defines how incident operations, including Life Safety, Investigation, Site Management and Recovery / Restoration, are prioritized, and when they can be implemented concurrently
- Establishes a process for after-action review and critique of emergency responses and implementing lessons learned
- Defines ICS implementation and training requirements for NYC agencies participating in citywide response
Overview of CIMS:
Primary Agency Matrix
General ICS Organization Structure
Core Competencies
OEM's CIMS Responsibilities
