The organizers extend their appreciation to the United States Fire Administration, Federal Emergency Management Agency, and in particular Administrator David Paulison, Division Director Dr. Cortez Lawrence, and project officer John Cochran.  The agency’s generous funding of this project under a grant made it possible to continue the conference series for this, its fifth year. In 2003, we consider the emerging issue of command and control technologies for incident management. Our previous conferences were on the “reinventing government” movement and fire services (2000) and Firefighter Safety (2001). Our 1999 and 2002 conferences dealt with deployment analysis. 
 
Additional financial support from Motorola and Nextel have supported travel costs for presenters and provided for hospitality. Please take a moment to add your thanks for their generosity and support for this conference to that we offer on behalf of the organizers.
 
Offering a conference program of a high quality requires an appropriate venue and untold hours of behind-the-scenes effort.  PennWell Publishing continues to offer complete support which makes this conference possible.  Without their generous in-kind support, we would be unable to attract the presenters from around the world. PennWell, the Institution of Fire Engineers (USA Branch), and John Jay College began this series in the hopes of fostering contact among international fire service leaders and researchers, and producing a legacy through production of proceedings.
 
On behalf of the organizing committee, we wish to thank the organizers, sponsors, presenters, and attendees for their contribution to this event’s success.