Definition
NERIS — the National Emergency Response Information System — is the United States national standard for collecting, reporting, and analyzing incident data from fire and emergency medical services departments. It is managed by the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) in coordination with the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI). Station Draft is not affiliated with either organization.
NERIS became mandatory for all fire and EMS incident data submission beginning January 1, 2026. The previous system, NFIRS (National Fire Incident Reporting System), was permanently sunset in February 2026.
Why NERIS Was Created
NFIRS was introduced in the 1970s. Over decades, it became increasingly limited in scope, structure, and the types of incidents it could represent. NERIS was developed to address those limitations by creating a modern, extensible data model capable of supporting the full range of emergency incident types that fire and EMS departments respond to today.
NERIS is designed to produce higher-quality, more granular incident data to support national fire research, resource allocation, and policy decisions. That higher data quality comes at a cost to frontline officers: more fields, more decisions, and a fundamentally different data model than NFIRS.
The Data Model
NERIS organizes incident data into three schemas:
Entity Schema
Defines department resources, capabilities, and apparatus. Submitted once and updated as the department changes, not per incident.
Dispatch Schema
Captures data elements from CAD or RMS at the time of dispatch: call type, units assigned, times, location.
Incident Schema
The per-incident record. Contains module-specific reporting requirements for Fire, EMS, HazMat, and other incident types. This is what officers fill out after every response.
Who Manages NERIS
NERIS is managed by the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA), a component of FEMA, in coordination with the Fire Safety Research Institute (FSRI), a program of UL Research Institutes. USFA sets the standard; FSRI operates the NERIS portal and supports implementation.
Station Draft is an independent tool built to help departments navigate the NERIS transition. It is not affiliated with USFA, FSRI, UL, or any RMS vendor.