Guide to AIIMS and CIMS

Best Practice Guide

Introducing CIMS (Coordinated Incident Management System)

Across the Tasman Sea, neighbouring New Zealand’s emergency management arrangements are coordinated under the legal auspices of the Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Act 2002, tenets of which are now associated with the National Civil Defence Emergency Management Plan Order 2015.

That Order compels emergency services to use the CIMS (Coordinated Incident Management System) framework to guide the coordination of operations. Further, practitioners fulfilling key response roles at the national, CDEM Group, and local levels are to be trained and practised in the use of CIMS.

So, what is CIMS? First developed in 1998 to provide emergency management agencies with a framework to coordinate and cooperate effectively in a response, CIMS, the primary reference for incident management in New Zealand, is largely based on similar systems used in North America and Australia (NIMS and AIIMS respectively).

The purpose of the system is to enable personnel to respond effectively to incidents through appropriate coordination across functions and organisations.

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