Key Concepts

eICS provides a structure of entities upon which your organization builds its Incident Command System. Entities include domains, facilities, and health systems (or groups of facilities). In addition, libraries (domain and facility) are key components in your Incident Command structure.

During the Planning phase, you use the Planning Dashboard to plan your incident command structure and communications. eICS provides you with tools to construct plans before they are needed for an emergency situation.

During the Response phase, you use the Incident Dashboard to coordinate your response to active incidents. The resources you set up in the Planning phase will help facilitate the incident response, and you can make updates as circumstances change.

During the Recovery phase, you can manage the incident reports and improvement plans. Forms and reports help you summarize and analyze important information about incidents. The Improvement Plan helps you identify changes you could make to improve your plan.

Through Profile, users with access to eICS can manage their profile information, including their contact details and notification preferences. You are also able to review the ICS positions to which you are assigned and add notes through the appropriate drawers.

As an administrator, when you add a new contact, you must decide if that person is allowed to log in to eICS. Some contacts need to use eICS for tasks like managing the incident response, but other contacts do not need to access eICS. You can create a user account when adding or editing a contact by entering an email address, phone number, and user role and selecting Allowed to log in. Otherwise, the contact does not have a user account and cannot access eICS.

User roles are permission levels that are assigned to contacts within the system regardless of the person's access to eICS. Roles determine the permissions contacts have . Permissions govern access to the system and the level of tasks the contact can perform. There are five roles: Domain Administrator, Facility Administrator, Facility Staff, Facility Staff Limited, and External Contact.

When an incident occurs, another set of roles (positions) and permissions apply. In general, Facility Administrators and Staff take on ICS positions, acting as command staff, section chiefs, specialists, members of the labor pool, and so forth. As such, it is their incident position that governs their access and permissions during the incident. The same is true for External Contacts. If an External Contact is assigned a position in an incident, this individual can access the incident dashboard during the incident and add to or make changes according to the permissions associated with their position.

The features within the Planning Dashboard help you prepare for incidents before they happen. For example, you can use a dashboard to manage plans, incident response guides (IRGs), files, contacts, facilities, and event log labels.

During planning, administrators use the Plan Summary to customize and maintain their plans. The Plan Summary offers exceptional flexibility that allows facilities to establish multiple plans and build an appropriate ICS chart for each. This means that facilities can create and configure emergency operation plans that meet their unique needs.

The ICS chart is the list of positions associated with an incident type. This chart appears on both the Planning Dashboard and the Incident Dashboard. You can configure the ICS chart during the Planning phase. Then, during the Response phase, you can reference the ICS chart to verify positions, assignments, and contact information.

Developing and maintaining a plan's ICS chart involves defining where positions fit in the hierarchy (chain of command), specifying the individuals who are qualified for and may be asked to fill each position when an incident occurs (depth chart), and indicating how files and IRGs relate to each position.

Incident response guides (IRGs) are plans that describe how to respond to a specific type of incident. Response guides are created or copied by Domain or Facility Administrators during the planning phase to clarify the positions, contacts, and actions that are expected in relation to an incident. If your facility is authorized to edit its plan, administrators can add or delete IRGs, copy IRGs to create new ones, specify general details, identify ICS positions, and add and maintain objectives, files, and locations.

IRGs are comprised of elements, such as resources and tasks that are specific to the type of incident, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, ice storms, mass casualty incidents, explosions, infectious disease, and missing persons. IRGs streamline incident response by offering a comprehensive strategy that includes a clear command structure, concise tasks that automatically direct action, and a repository for relevant files and geocoded locations.

Administrators establish objectives on IRGs to identify the tasks and goals that will guide response efforts during an incident. Objectives can also be used to identify operational period milestones and response strategies. To help determine who should complete objectives and when they should be completed, you can prioritize them and assign them to ICS Chart positions and operational periods.

Adding locations to IRGs ensures basic navigational information is available to incident participants. You can include the location of your organizations facilities, as well as known entities such as the Command Center, area hospitals, shelters, and law enforcement stations.

The HICS model calls for preparation of and easy access to incident command position definitions, job action sheets, and policies and procedures before, during, and after an incident. To address these guidelines, eICS provides a comprehensive, web-based document management system called the Library. The library contains your emergency operations plans (EOPs) and can aid you in tracking your organization's compliance with relevant entities.

Contacts are the internal and external people that participate in, might be affected by, or need to be notified about an incident. Internal contacts are assigned one or more roles for each domain or facility with which they are associated. External contacts have limited access to facility information, and, in most cases, have been added mainly to ensure they receive notifications.

A facility is an entity that represents an individual organized unit, such as a hospital, EMS agency, corporation, or institution. Each facility is a member of one domain and can be associated with zero, one, or multiple health systems.

Incidents are events, disasters or disruptions that require a planned, coordinated response to resolve them. In the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) glossary, incidents are defined as "An occurrence, natural or human-caused, that requires a response to protect life or property."

There are three types of incidents, including Actual Incidents, Exercise/Drill, and System Test. When you create an incident, you specify that it is an Actual Incident or Exercise/Drill. When you create a test, the type is selected automatically.

Operational periods are used to indicate an incident's progress and organize objectives. You can move an incident to a new operational period by editing the incident. By default, eICS has the following operational periods (listed chronologically): Immediate, Intermediate, Extended, and Recovery.

The Incident Dashboard is a central location through which people involved in an incident can access information. During response, command staff and responders use it to review their objectives, communicate with one another, view incident locations, and more. After an incident ends, facility administrators and staff use the dashboard to review incident details, develop the after action report, and make improvements to the plan.

The Event Log is the equivalent of a paper-based Operational Log. It lists system-generated and manually-added entries that document certain types of actions that have occurred since the incident was created. By default, entries appear in reverse chronological order and provide information such as the Type, Details, Labels, and Created By of entries.

The Improvement Plan is a review measure used during the recovery process and on an ongoing basis to address shortcomings or issues observed in relation to incidents, exercises, and drills. Incident management is a cyclical process. Evaluation of the issues produces additional action items that are recommended to improve incident management. Personnel designated to review the incident can see the issues and items added by other users, and they can add or change action items and apply agreed upon changes to improve the plan and response.

During an incident, you can mark entries as potential improvements via the event log in the Incident Dashboard. After the event, you can assess these items to determine whether to include them as improvements to your plan. In addition, after an incident you can assess and flag objectives, messages, and other events from the incident or exercise to assess whether each item should be included in your next round of improvements.