NERIS represents a fundamental modernization of what fire and EMS agencies have long done in NFIRS. While NFIRS focused on standardized incident reporting for national fire data collection, NERIS is built as a real?time, all?hazards information system designed for today’s operational environment. It expands beyond traditional fire categories to capture richer EMS, rescue, community risk, and situational data, and it uses modern APIs, cloud architecture, and analytics to support decision?making rather than just record?keeping. In practice, NFIRS tells you what happened after the fact, while NERIS is structured to help agencies understand what is happening now and what is likely to happen next, enabling better resource deployment, risk reduction strategies, and interoperability across disciplines. Online course