Institution: FEMA

Course Description: The National Incident Management System (NIMS) provides a consistent nationwide template to enable all government, private-sector, and nongovernmental organizations to work together during domestic incidents. This includes public information.

The public information systems described in NIMS are designed to effectively manage public information at an incident, regardless of the size and complexity of the situation or the number of entities involved in the response.

Prerequisite: N/A.  However, completion of IS-700, National Incident Management System (NIMS), An Introduction is recommended.

CEUs: 0.3

Course Objectives:  The goal of this course is to facilitate NIMS compliance by providing you with the basic information and tools that you need to apply the NIMS public information systems and protocols during incident management.  At the conclusion of this course, you should be able to:

•  Define NIMS public information systems to include onsite operations, the Joint Information System (JIS), and the Joint Information Center (JIC), and how they relate to each other.
•  Describe the JIS/JIC process of gathering, verifying, coordinating, and disseminating information by public information and incident management personnel.
•  Identify each agency involved in given emergency situations and the role of each in the JIS to ensure appropriate situational awareness information is communicated to the public.
•  Define key terms related to public information systems to include the relationship with multiagency coordination systems and the field.
•  Identify typical resource requirements for public information systems.

Target Audience:  This course is designed for local and State public information officers.

Course Format: Independent Study
http://training.fema.gov/is/courseoverview.aspx?code=IS-702.a

Time Requirement: Approximately 3 hours.

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