Official resource
NERIS — the National Emergency Response Information System
The system itself: what NERIS is, how it is structured, and the timeline departments are working to.
Records Management and the Move to NERIS
What fire department records systems do, how incident data moves from CAD into reporting systems, what changed with the transition from NFIRS to NERIS, and why fire departments should understand their data even when a vendor submits it for them.
The short version
Three systems get spoken about as if they were one. CAD documents the response. The records system documents the incident. NERIS creates a standardized national fire and emergency response data environment. Those systems may exchange information, but they are not the same thing — some information originates in CAD and flows forward, some has to be documented after the incident, and your RMS vendor sits between your department and the national dataset. That is worth understanding before you rely entirely on a vendor dashboard to tell you what your own department did.
Start here
If you read one thing on this subject, read this.
Go deeper
Official resource
NERIS Public — browse and download incident data
The public interface for filtering and exporting NERIS incident data.
Official resource
NERIS at the U.S. Fire Administration
USFA's own guidance on the transition, including what departments need to do and by when.
Official resource
NERIS Frequently Asked Questions
Direct answers on timing, participation, data elements and what departments have to do.
Why it matters
The quickest way to check a vendor's claim about what NERIS does or does not require of you.
Questions to ask your vendor
- What information originates in CAD, and what has to be documented afterwards?
- How does our RMS vendor submit our data to NERIS?
- Who owns our incident data — us, or the vendor hosting it?
- How is our data validated, and who sees the errors?
- Can we get at our own records without going through the vendor's dashboard?
- If we changed RMS vendors, what would we be able to take with us?
This is a reading list, not a guide
Everything above was published by someone else, and is here because it is the clearest treatment of the subject we could find and verify. The Hub’s own guide to this topic is still being written. If you know a better source than the ones listed, that is worth telling us before it is.
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