Illinois Professional Emergency Management Association (IPEMA)

The Illinois Professional Emergency Management Association (IPEMA) is a new association that will be serving the State of Illinois and the Illinois emergency management community. The goal of this association is to embrace an “All Hazards, Whole Community” approach taking emergency management response, training, and planning in Illinois to the next level.  What truly will set IPEMA apart is that all State of Illinois response associations such as the fire services Mutual Aid Box Alarm System (MABAS), the Illinois Law Enforcement Alarm System (ILEAS), IPWMAN, etc. will be represented and have advisory seats on the Board. IPEMA will work to increase communication between agencies and to better identify capabilities and resources. In addition to state, county, and local emergency management agencies, IPEMA looks to engage with private industry, consulting firms, higher education institutions, hospitals/public health, non-governmental organizations. Lessons learned from previous disasters across our nation such as hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires and the COVID 19 pandemic support that emergency management needs to embrace a whole community response.  IPEMA will assist with the development of regional Incident Management Assistance Teams (IMAT) that can quickly respond to assist local counties or municipalities dealing with a large scale or expanding incident or event. The regional IMAT’s will also be poised to support the State’s Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT). IPEMA will work with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency (IEMA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Emergency Management Institute (EMI) to focus on education and build capabilities.

ILGISA has partnered with IPEMA to spread the word about the organization throughout the GIS community in order to recruit GIS professionals who have an interest in serving on emergency response teams. 

Interested in learning more about IPEMA? Visit their website by clicking here. 

If you are a GIS professional with an interest in getting involved with IPEMA, please contact us at [email protected].