The Coordinated Regional Incident-Management Procedure or Gecoördineerde Regionale Incidentbestrijdings Procedure (GRIP) is a nationwide emergency management

Emergency management

Emergency management is the generic name of an interdisciplinary field dealing with the strategic organizational management processes used to protect critical assets of an organization from hazard risks that can cause events like disasters or catastrophes and to ensure the continuance of the...

 procedure in the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

.
The procedure is used by all emergency services, different layers of government and government agencies.

The nationwide digital communication system C2000 is used for communications between the various emergency services and the policy teams and coordination centres.

Stages

The procedure is scaled according to the affected area of an incident. There are four stages with an unofficial Stage 0 for normal day-to-day operations during small incidents.

Phase	Affected area
GRIP 0	Source-suppression. Day-to-day routine operations, no special coordination necessary.
GRIP 1	Source-suppression. Incident of limited proportions, harmonisation necessary between the various emergency services.
GRIP 2	Source- and effect suppression. Incident with a definite effect on the surrounding area.
GRIP 3	Threatened well-being of (large groups of) the population within a single municipality.
GRIP 4	More than one municipality, province or country.

GRIP 1

Due to the nature of the incident several emergency services are needed (fire

Fire department

A fire department or fire brigade is a public or private organization that provides fire protection for a certain jurisdiction, which typically is a municipality, county, or fire protection district...

, Emergency medical services

Emergency medical services

Emergency medical services are a type of emergency service dedicated to providing out-of-hospital acute medical care and/or transport to definitive care, to patients with illnesses and injuries which the patient, or the medical practitioner, believes constitutes a medical emergency...

, police

Police

The police is a personification of the state designated to put in practice the enforced law, protect property and reduce civil disorder in civilian matters. Their powers include the legitimized use of force...

) and their deployment needs coordination. A coordination team consisting of duty officer

Duty officer

Duty officer is the name of a rotating position assigned to a junior military officer in a duty or watch system. The duty officer is charged with responsibility for a military unit and acts as the commanding officer's representative. The duty officer attends to menial tasks for the commanding...

s of the involved services is set up; there is no single commander.

GRIP 2

A single command is established. This team is housed at a central location in the region and consists of managers of the involved services.
The mayor

Mayor

In many countries, a Mayor is the highest ranking officer in the municipal government of a town or a large urban city....

 of the affected municipality

Municipality

A municipality is essentially an urban administrative division having corporate status and usually powers of self-government. It can also be used to mean the governing body of a municipality. A municipality is a general-purpose administrative subdivision, as opposed to a special-purpose district...

 is informed; he will order (part of) the municipal policy team to convene. Since the mayor is the commander in chief in civilian emergencies his policy team will advise him on further actions such as evacuations.

GRIP 3

A large area is affected. The mayor will order his full policy team and the municipal disaster management team to convene. The regional operational team will also convene in full composition.

A mayor of one of the municipalities in the region is appointed as coordinating mayor; this is usually the mayor of the largest city in the region. This person chairs the regional policy team which further consists of chiefs of the emergency services and other advisors.
The Queen's Commissioner

Queen's Commissioner

The Queen's Commissioner is the head of a province in the Netherlands, who is chairman of both the Provinciale Staten and the Gedeputeerde Staten , but only has a right to vote in the latter...

 is informed, who in turn informs the Minister of the Interior.

The incident can formally be classified as a disaster, although GRIP 3 can also be used in case of an impending disaster.

GRIP 4

The effects of the disaster affect more than one municipality or even more than one province or country. The Queen's Commissioner orders the Provincial Coordination Center (PCC) into action. The mayors of the affected municipalities still function as commanders in chief in their own areas, but the commissioner has the power to give mayors orders. The commissioner has a coordinating role as long as the incident's effects do not affect other provinces. If other provinces are affected the Minister of the Interior assumes the coordinating role; he has the power to give the Queen's commissioners orders.
The minister will make use of the National Coordination Centre (NCC), which is continuously staffed. The NCC functions as an international point of contact when other nations are involved, either as affected areas or when providing assistance.