What is NIMS? A set of principles that provides a systematic, proactive approach guiding government agencies at all levels, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sectors to work seamlessly to prevent, protect against, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of incidents, regardless of cause, size, location, or complexity, in order to reduce the loss of life or property and harm to the environment.
Ethiopian National Incident Management System (NIMS) is a partnership program between United States government (USAID/USFS) and Government of Ethiopia - National Disaster Risk Management Commission (NDRMC) for capacity building in Disaster management. It is a program adopted to strengthen Ethiopian Disaster Response capacity by integrating selected components of NIMS into the existing Disaster Risk Management system.
The program began with initial consultations and workshops, and in early 2010, four components of the US National Incident Management System (NIMS) were identified as potentially beneficial to Disaster Risk Management (DRM) within Ethiopia contexts: Multiagency Coordination Systems (MACS), Emergency Operations Centers (EOC), Incident Command System (ICS), and Comprehensive Emergency Preparedness and Response Planning. Since then, different activities have been carried out at Federal and Regional levels. These include:-
The NIMS program is adopted with a view to strengthen the preparedness, coordination and response capacity of the Ethiopia DRM structures at different levels (Federal, Regional, Zonal and Woreda). Program specific Objective:
Government of Ethiopia (NDRMC, Oromia,DRMC, Afar DPFSPCO, Amhara DPFSPANSSCC, Dire Dawa DRMCO, SNPPR DRMC, Somali DRMB, Tigray EW&RD, FDRMC, BDU), US government (USAID and USFS) and others
