GENIMS - A user-centric and GIS-enabled incident management system

Ensuring a prompt and a coordinated response to emergency situations is vital to the operation of emergency response teams. In this research, we have worked with a local police department to analyse, design and develop an end-to-end and geographically-enabled incident management system (GENIMS). By blending some advanced information and communication technologies, including global positioning systems (GPS), geographic information systems (GIS), global system for mobile communications (GSM), SMS messaging and RDBMS, our system provides a coordinated mechanism for decision-making to ensure timely intervention in times of crisis. GENIMS also embeds powerful resource management capabilities, designed to help law enforcement officers identify, dispatch and track the needed resources. Preliminary validation results showed that GENIMS has the potential to help reduce incident response time and facilitate inter-agency communication. The experience reported herein can inspire other public safety agencies to develop their own IMS and customise it to their unique needs.