On behalf of the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Fire Administration, the Emergency Management and Response—Information Sharing and Analysis Center (EMR-ISAC) offers its no-cost services to the public-safety community. The IAFC has worked with the EMS-ISAC for nearly a decade to enhance national information sharing efforts with the fire and emergency service community.
Located at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Md., the EMR-ISAC provides threat and vulnerability information, as well as critical infrastructure protection and resilience lessons learned and best practices, to the leaders and operators of the nation’s emergency services sector (ESS). Frequently, the information will have direct relevance to the safety and protection as well as the emergency plans and operations of volunteer and combined fire departments.
The EMR-ISAC primarily aims to help firefighters, EMTs and paramedics, law enforcers, emergency managers, 9-1-1 operators and related disciplines in making informed decisions about survivability and continuity of operations in an all-hazards environment. The intended outcome of the EMR-ISAC efforts is to improve the capabilities of emergency departments and agencies to perform their mission-essential tasks before, during and after an all-hazards event.
In addition to For Official Use Only (FOUO) documents for vetted/validated personnel, the EMR-ISAC also disseminates weekly nonsensitive INFOGRAMs for a wider ESS audience. The free services of the EMR-ISAC specifically support DHS initiatives to share information among federal, state, local, tribal, territorial public and private departments, agencies and organizations.
Recently, the EMR-ISAC established a community of interest on the Homeland Security Information Network to facilitate the sharing of FOUO information with the vetted, incumbent ESS leadership. The community includes announcements, alerts, advisories, updated products, news feeds and other useful links from throughout the nation.