Federal Emergency Management Information System (FEMIS)
Source: Pacific Northwest Laboratory
Date: 8/1/95    Record No.: 10184
Contact: Tom Coonelly, 509-375-6480

Federal Emergency Management Information System (FEMIS)
FEMIS is an automated decision support system which integrates all phases of emergency management. It was developed for the U.S. Army to deal with chemical weapons, but it is a generic set of tools that can be adapted to any emergency response situation, providing planning, coordination, response, training and exercise support for emergency managers. FEMIS enables the integration and use of real-time data from outside sources (e.g., weather monitors), which can be displayed in geographical and/or tabular form. It tracks resources, task lists, and organizations; it provides event logs; it reminds the user about overdue tasks; and it reports on the status of a wide variety of items. FEMIS uses commercial software in a distributed system architecture.

It is a general, "vanilla" capability to bring in information from over a large geographical area and respond to it. One important element--it can provide systematic coordination of different agencies and jurisdictions; i.e., company, local, county, state and federal.

Possibilities for utilities--a new breed of nuclear plant emergency response tools, application to transmission grid management (operations and emergency planning; e.g., storms). Discussions are under way with several potential commercializers, and a helpful overview brochure is available.

Topics: NUCLEAR
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