The National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC) is located within Department of Homeland Security Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office (CWMD) as a unique national resource.
NBIC integrates, analyzes, and shares key information about developing biothreats to ensure U.S. responses are well-informed, minimize economic impact, and save lives. The threat of bioterrorism and the global reach of emerging diseases like COVID-19, Ebola virus disease, avian influenza, and Zika virus require the nation’s decision makers to have timely, accurate, and actionable information.
As part of DHS CWMD, NBIC collaborates with and coordinates across federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal government partners. Under its One Health mission, NBIC integrates and provides information and analysis from tens of thousands of sources about biological events impacting human, animal, plant, and environmental health to improve national and international early warning and situational awareness. NBIC products enable government partners at all levels to make more informed decisions at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. The result is a broader, more informed view of the threat landscape that helps the nation better prepare, protect, and respond.
Enable early warning to operators and responders at all levels of government, increase shared situational awareness of acute biological events, and support better decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking.
- Rapidly identify, characterize, localize, and track a biological event of national concern by integrating and analyzing data relating to human health, animal, plant, food, and environmental monitoring systems (both national and international)
- Disseminate alerts and other information to member agencies and, in coordination with (and where possible through) member agencies, to agencies of state, local, and tribal governments, as appropriate, to enhance the ability of such agencies to respond to a biological event of national concern
NBIC is the operational arm of the National Biosurveillance Integration System (NBIS), which is an interagency federal collaboration that supports the NBIC’s mission to enable early warning to operators and responders at all levels of government and shared situational awareness of acute biological events and to support better decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking. The following list includes all member departments and agencies within the NBIS.
- Department of Homeland Security
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of Defense
- Department of Energy
- Department of Health and Human Services
- Department of the Interior
- Department of Justice
- Department of Labor
- Department of State
- Department of Transportation
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- Environmental Protection Agency
- Office of the Director of National Intelligence
- United States Postal Service
NBIC is led by Director Aaron Firoved, Ph.D.
The Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act of 2007, 6 U.S.C. 195(b), directed the Secretary of Homeland Security, through the Assistant Secretary for CWMD, to “establish, operate, and maintain a National Biosurveillance Integration Center (referred to in this section as the ‘NBIC’)” and “oversee the development and operation of the National Biosurveillance Integration System.” The Act specifically tasked NBIC with integrating and analyzing information from human health, animal, plant, food, and environmental monitoring systems across the Federal Government and supporting the federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal partners.