Disadvantages Of NIMS

After the introduction of the National Incident Management System (NIMS) in 2004, it has grown into an exceptional system that provides a standard approach to managing disasters and threats nationwide. Seemingly, the system has progressed from incident to incident learning from mistakes and difficulties, while providing new guidance for future events. However, NIMS does come with several disadvantages that still plagues us today.

Initially, NIMS sheer size in trying to incorporate the all-hazard approach for the entire nation can somewhat be daunting for emergency responders. Seemingly, a particular hazard may present itself as being similar, but the circumstances around the event are always different. Therefore, these unseen differences create
Furthermore, NIMS may provide the proper guidance for a single agency for a limited time during a small event where the agency received training, but confusion may arise in a multi-agency event where everyone is not familiar with the system.

Moreover, NIMS is hard to implement in the initial phase of an incident, where the event is still unfolding and many factors are still unknown. Those initial decisions made by the arriving Incident Commander (IC) are made in an effort to stop the chaos, even though they are unsure of what is happening or what they are trying to accomplish (Renaud, 2012).

Additionally, communications and information sharing among multi-agencies can be hindered by the very same systems due to interoperability, reliability, scalability, resilience and redundancy. Therefore, these communication issues can create additional problems, confusion and potentially put emergency responders in jeopardy during the initial first few hours of the event. However, these systems can fail in the initial hours if the incident without any regard to the NIMS