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NIEM Emergency Management Domain Announces New Chair

The NIEM Emergency Management Domain is proud to announce Dan Cotter, director, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) First Responders Group (FRG), as its new Chair. Cotter replaces Jalal Mapar, the director of DHS S&T Resilient Systems Division, who successfully served as chair of the domain since 2014.

The NIEM Emergency Management Domain was created to facilitate meaningful and productive collaboration and communication among public and private sector organizations in the emergency management arena. Through the domain’s efforts, members are able to share best practices, harmonize schemas, refine exchanges and align systems in a manner that will yield greater information sharing effectiveness.

Under Mapar's tenure, the Emergency Management Domain was revitalized and its members re-engaged through formal training, collaborative review of domain documents and best practices, and working group participation. In the past two years, the domain has matured with strong community engagement, technical assistance capabilities, established communication platforms, and a rapidly maturing data model that is slated for public release with NIEM version 3.2. During this timeframe, the domain was also active in several working groups within the NIEM Business Architecture Committee.

As the new Emergency Management Domain chair, Cotter is in an ideal position to deliver outstanding domain guidance and management. Cotter as director for the FRG has close alignment with the state and local responder communities that the Emergency Management Domain is geared to support. Prioritized areas of FRG focus and initiatives include:

  • Making first responders safer
  • Helping first responders share data and critical information
  • Helping first responders communicate through interoperability
  • Engaging, communicating and partnering with first responders

Cotter noted that he was “excited by the potential for increasing interoperability across communities and within cooperating emergency management organizations, particularly as such activities directly support the mission of the First Responders Group.”

In laying out a strategy for the domain to expand its technical assistance support in the coming year, Cotter looks to capitalize on rapid progress in data model maturation and an experienced technical support team.

“I’m aware of how closely the domain has worked with local organizations to assure NIEM alignment in their existing exchanges,” Cotter said. “This type of work, along with NIEM training, really serves to give resource challenged community organizations a head start in setting up strong information exchange environments.”

Cotter intends to expand domain engagement with stakeholders and potential NIEM users within the emergency management community.

For more information on the NIEM Emergency Management Domain, please visit the community page at: https://www.niem.gov/communities/emergency-management. For information related to membership or training, please contact the NIEM Emergency Management Domain facilitator team at NIEM-EM-Facilitator@cse-corp.com.