Nash County Fire Departments found that the “passport” based accountability system in use was labor intensive and was subsequently rarely used. In addition, there was no county wide credential system that could be used to conclusively identify first responders who reported for duty at emergency incident scenes.

Solution

    County evaluators searched for, and found two systems that met simple, effective and affordable criteria, but only when combined. One system was FieldSoft’s AIMSonScene™ incident command system (ICS) software already licensed and in use by the Nashville, NC Fire Department. The other system was a high quality Polaroid Digital Photo-ID system offered for sale by Eastern Data Plastic Card Systems (EDPCS); a North Carolina based vendor.

    The Photo-ID system solved the credential need through system generated plastic ID cards that included responder photographs and magnetic stripes. Each magnetic stripe contained softcopy information such as name, rank, agency, certifications and the like. AIMSonScene software, found NIMS “Consistent” by the NIMS Support Center, included “PAR”, “Roll Call”, and other accountability features. The missing piece however, was an interface between the magnetic stripe card reader and AIMSonScene; an interface that would pass resource data from the reader to the software.

    An EDPCS software engineer used the AIMSonScene application programming interface (API) to code an interface between the two systems. An EDPCS account manager, with no fire service experience, demonstrated to county first responders how the interfaced system worked together. The Nash County Fire/Rescue Association then funded the purchase.