About the NERIS Cheat Sheet

About the NERIS Cheat Sheet

The (still developing) NERIS cheat sheet, and surrounding pages, help firefighters select the commonly used values, allowing us not to scroll long lists of values, and hierarchies of choices:

• How to map from those burned into memory NFIRS codes to NERIS.
• How to quickly select the correct NERIS incident type, via type groups.
• Map from NFIRS Actions Taken to NERIS Actions Tactics.
• Map from NFIRS Property Use to NERIS Location Use.

Here are the full lists:

• Incident types mapped from NFIRS, and grouped for NERIS.
• Actions Tactics mapped from NFIRS, and grouped for NERIS.
• Location Use mapped from NFIRS, and grouped for NERIS.

Why do we pick these three amongst all?

There are many lists of options in NFIRS and NERIS, all ​documented here​, but most of them are short and easy to deal with in context. Did you use small (1-2") or medium (2-3") hose, for example, is easy to determine. There is no hidden ‘double-jacketed, national-thread, 2.5" hose’ option tucked in a corner. Most lists are simple to select from.

These three are longer lists, making it harder to get the correct value, and know you have the correct value. Having familiarity with these lists helps you know what options exist:

• Incident Type is the primary selection we need to make in the report, describing what we ran on, and (although NERIS is shorter than NFIRS) is a long list.
• Actions Tactics are critical to the data NERIS is building on what works, and what doesn’t, and how we learn from each others experience.
• Location Use is the final long list and varies wildly from roads to buildings to open space to commercial establishments.

Work in progress

This cheat-sheet will evolve as the fire service continues to build experience on reporting with NERIS.

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