General Information | What is NERIS | Reporting Requirements | Be NERIS Ready
Recommendations for 2025 | Troubleshooting & Resources
General Information
NERIS - A New Reporting Platform for Nebraska Fire Departments
Over the past few years, the U.S. Fire Administration has been working with industry leaders in the fire service to develop a new national incident reporting system called NERIS, the National Emergency Response Information System.
This page provides information to assist fire departments in the State of Nebraska transition to NERIS from NFIRS (National Fire Incident Reporting System). NERIS is currently being rolled out by region across the nation with Nebraska slated to start onboarding departments in August of 2025, an initiative that will continue through the end of the year.
What is NERIS?
Today's firefighters do much more than fight fires. NERIS is a new tool to gather, report, and analyze all hazards incident data that focuses on risk, deployment, and performance.
NERIS was designed to provide the fire service with incident response data in near real time, allowing for informed decisions that will enhance safety for firefighters, residents, and communities. As a flexible, scalable, interoperable tool that can adapt to reflect emerging issues, once fully functional NERIS can integrate information from CAD and Record Management Systems (RMS) after they have demonstrated compatibility with the NERIS platform. The program also integrates with geospatial information systems and has been designed with an open architecture to allow for future integrations. NERIS will provide detailed analytics available on smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktop computers through a cloud-based platform.
Is Reporting Required?
Nebraska State Statue §81-506 requires all fire departments to report the details of fires to the State Fire Marshal. The NERIS platform will become the official site to meet that requirement. Reporting is also a requirement for departments who receive federal grant awards, the most notable of which is the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG). Since 2001 the AFG grant has helped firefighters obtain critically needed equipment, protective gear, and emergency vehicles. In 2023, FEMA made 1,635 AFG awards nationwide totaling $324 million.
Living in a data driven world, NERIS will give you easy access to analytic tools that you can provide when it comes time to justify budgets or request new resources. Reporting also is a factor in the ISO rating, a rating which impacts home insurance rates in your community.
Be NERIS Ready
Steps all departments should take in preparation for rollout
One of the first decisions a department needs to make is the reporting method. The two options are directly to NERIS (which is free) or through an RMS vendor. A list of vendors who have meet the qualifications and obtained a data compatibility badge can be found at: Integration Partners | NERIS. As new vendors qualify, this list will be updated.
Next, each fire chief will be asked to determine who will be the initial lead administrator for the department. This administrator will be the lead to oversee NERIS on-boarding and implementation. Additional duties will include reviewing and updating department demographic information, inviting other users to the site and assigning their roles, and to be the contact for any integrations with CAD or RMS systems.
To ensure continuity of operations and reporting, it is recommended the chief to identify one or two additional department members to act as NERIS administrators. The additional administrators will be invited to join by the lead/initial administrator.Gather demographic information for your department that the initial/lead administrator will use to set up your account including the following:
- Basic information including phone number, headquarters address, population currently protected, number of paid and volunteer members, dispatch protocols, PSAP information, and identify whether the department uses automatic vehicle location (AVL)
- Geographic service boundaries (i.e. first-due boundaries and districts within a department’s service area)
- Unit and apparatus inventory, including apparatus types
- Services that your department provides, the broad categories for classification include fire suppression, EMS, fire investigation, Hazmat response, and technical rescue.
- Interdepartmental relationships including mutual, automatic and contract aid
If you use Computer Aided Dispatch, decide if you want to share dispatch data with NERIS. A key advantage of this is that initial call out data would be pre-loaded to the incident report thus decreasing manual data entry. If you select this option, check with your vendor and ask if they have built a NERIS compatible API (application programming interface) and if so when it will be ready to start interfacing for data submittal. You may have to work with another department/agency if dispatch doesn’t report directly to your fire department.
2025 is a Hybrid Reporting Year
Departments will continue to report to NFIRS in 2025 until they are onboarded to NERIS. Once onboarded, a department will cease entry into NFIRS (old platform) and will only be reporting to NERIS. NOTE: If needed, reports from earlier in the 2025 calendar year can be entered into the new site as long as they are not also in the old reporting platform.
When your department starts submitting live data to NERIS, contact Deb Hostetler deb.hostetler@nebraska.gov with the actual start date. If possible, try to schedule the actual start date of the entry of new reports for the first day of a month. For example, use the month of August to set up your department in NERIS and invite new users and become familiar with the site and then on Sept 1 start entering incident data and cease NEIRS reporting on August 31st.
Recommendations for Departments Using Third-Party Data Reporting Software
Vendors who have demonstrated compatibility with NERIS will receive a data compatibility badge. A list of vendors who are NERIS ready can be found at: Integration Partners | NERIS. As new vendors qualify, this list will be updated. If your vendor is not here, reach out to them and ask what their plans are.
Here is a link to a quick start guide to connect your vendor to your department in NEFIRS: NERIS+-Vendor-Integration-Enrollment.pdf
Departments who will be using third-party reporting software should also select an initial NERIS lead/project manager plus one or two additional administrators who will be invited in by the lead. This is important if you need to change your vendor, add or delete equipment, update your GIS boundaries or department dashboard.
Departments that currently use a third-party reporting software should consult with their current vendors about access to past incident reports and historical aggregate data after the transition to NERIS. If needed, there is time between now and the end of January 2026 to download incident data from NFIRS (the old system) prior to it being decommissioned.
Recommendations for Departments with Incident Data in NFIRS
(Current system to be decommissioned after 1/31/2026)
After January 31, 2026, NFIRS (the current reporting system which is being replaced) will be fully decommissioned. This means that nobody will have access to the site or information contained in it. All departments who currently report to NFIRS should review their records retention policy to determine how many years of data they need to be able to access.
A few reasons why a department might need access to historical incidents include: requests from property owners or insurance companies for reports, freedom of incident act requests, and proof of reporting when applying for grant awards or for an ISO review.
After determining the number of years that incident reports need to be maintained, closely review your current inventory of records. If your department has been in the practice of printing or saving a copy of each report when entered, then you are good. If your department uses third-party reporting software and you have verified older reports will still be accessible after transitioning to NERIS, then you are also good. However, if you have been relying on NERIS to store your records, then there is additional work that needs to be done. There are three methods to consider:
- If a department has a small number of incidents each year, consider logging into NFIRS to generate a PDF of each report which can then be printed or saved.
- Otherwise, a department can do a bulk export from NFIRS of incident data. In order not to overload the system, departments are asked to export data one year at a time, waiting for the results to be returned prior to doing the next year. The information returned is in a raw format.
- The other option (preferred) is to log into the Data Warehouse and schedule an excel export of incident data. This option requires more steps than the bulk export, but results are in an easier to read/maintain, and searchable format.
Click the link below under the Resource Hub, NFIRS Sunset for more information and access to instructions on how to export data. If you need assistance with this, contact Deb Hostetler at 402-471-9479 or deb.hostetler@nebraska.gov.
Troubleshooting
This section will be updated periodically as the Nebraska State Fire Marshal becomes aware of any bugs and fixes.
NERIS uses Multi-Factor Authentication to ensure data security. This will require users to enter a time-limited access code that is emailed to them during login. Users on a small number of platforms have reported that these emails arrive after the time limit expires. The NEFIRS team is working on this issue and expects that it will be corrected by the time that Nebraska fire departments are on board.
Additional Resources
Links and Contact Information
The NERIS home page is https://neris.fsri.org
Onboarding Information | NERIS – What to Expect and How to Prepare
Resource Hub | NERIS – Your one stop to all documents and training videos (be sure to click on view all videos)
NFIRS Sunset – IMPORTANT: NFIRS will be decommissioned and no longer available after January 31, 2026. All departments who reported to NFIRS need to consider whether incidents need to be downloaded. Click the NFIRS Sunset link for more information.
NEFIS Support Center
NERIS@UL.ORG – Information Desk – General Inquiries
NERIS.HELPDESK@UL.ORG – Help Desk – Technical Issues (such as account assistance)
Nebraska State Fire Marshal Contact: Deb Hostetler - 402-471-9479 or 402-326-3638
