About Resource Inventorying
Effective resource management involves establishing a resource inventory and keeping the information current and accurate. Inventories include an up-to-date count and pertinent details about an organization’s resources. Inventories are used to support resource-related planning activities in the preparedness phase and often serve as the basis for resource deployment and tracking during an incident.
Resource Inventory System
The Incident Resource Inventory System (IRIS) is a distributed software tool, provided at no-cost to the community by FEMA. It allows organizations and users to identify and inventory their resources consistently with National Incident Management System (NIMS) resource typing definitions and NQS positions. It is designed to help your organization implement NIMS by supporting both resource inventorying and typing practices.
The system can be used to inventory equipment, personnel, teams, facilities, and supplies. The Resource Inventory System automatically uses the NIMS resource typing definitions cataloged in the Resource Typing Library Tool. If your organization manages resources that do not align to any of the standard NIMS definitions or position qualifications, you can create your own definitions and qualifications. Additionally, the Resource Inventory System also provides a basic “Resource Typing Calculator” functionality to aid organizations in confirming which NIMS resource typing definition their resource aligns to when inventorying.
Currently, IRIS stores data locally on the user’s computer or on the user’s network if configured during installation. Please note IRIS is not a database centrally managed by FEMA. Users and their respective agencies are responsible for their own data.
Coming Soon
IRIS is upgrading and moving to a secure cloud-hosted environment in the Spring of 2021. Existing IRIS users that share their metrics with the IRIS Hub will be notified when the new, centrally cloud-hosted Resource Inventory System is released and available for use. Detailed instructions and technical assistance on how to migrate existing IRIS instance to the Resource Inventory System will be provided upon release. Check back for more information in the coming months.
