Where is the fire?
The fire and rescue service of the 21st century is not just about extinguishing fires. Ray Hooper of the London Fire Brigade says it is about prevention as well as cure, the efficient management of resources and the assessment and mitigation of risk
Detailed and intelligent geographic information (GI), like that from national mapping agency Ordnance Survey, can play a key role in helping to improve efficiency, identify risk and utilise limited resources in the best possible way.
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) is the third largest fire-fighting organisation in the world, with an operating area of some 1 587 square kilometres and a resident population of 7.4 million. As such it collects, collates and holds a huge amount of information on incident trends, service efficiency and performance. Making full use of this valuable depository of data requires a powerful set of tools to analyse and interpret it whilst putting it into its wider location context. It is for this reason that LFB is now harnessing intelligent topographic and transport GI from Ordnance Survey within a Cadcorp® GIS.
Improving efficiency
According to Ray Hooper, Geographic Information System Manager at London Fire Brigade, 'We have a lot of information about primary fires, response times, false alarms, malicious calls and so on. Our challenge has been to make this available as widely and as promptly as possible for interpretation and action. That is why we chose to implement a brigade-wide corporate desktop and Intranet geographical information system (GIS).'
For those that are unaware, a GIS is a software application that allows digital map data to be coupled with third-party information and queried and analysed.
In the past the information that LFB needed for risk assessment, planning, resource management and performance measurement had been generally provided as printed tabular data, making for time-consuming and laborious interpretation. However, as the volume and scope of performance information increased, LFB realised they would have to adopt a more strategic and integrated approach. This was the driving force behind a move to GI. Ray recalls, 'We needed a corporate GIS to improve our efficiency in gathering information from a multitude of sources, analysing it and presenting the results for distribution across our entire organisation. That way it would be far easier and far quicker to understand and interpret, thus supporting decision making.'
After a competitive tendering process, LFB has decided upon a solution comprising Cadcorp desktop and web-based GIS software and a set of tools designed specifically for use by the emergency services. Underpinning the entire solution is Ordnance Survey's flagship digital mapping data OS MasterMap® Topography Layer and OS MasterMap Integrated Transport Network™ (ITN) Layer.
Saving cost, time and resource using OS MasterMap
According to Ray, 'OS MasterMap Topography Layer gives us considerable advantages over our previous mapping. It is available to us alongside a number of other mapping and address products under the Mapping Services Agreement (MSA), which keeps the cost down. It is the most accurate and up-to-date mapping data available, and highly detailed too – we can drill right down to see specific buildings of interest, for example.
Ray points out how OS MasterMap ITN Layer has also been of great benefit, allowing LFB to make important resource management decisions based on more than just simply distance. He says, 'We need to determine the optimum location for our large fire and rescue units. To do this, we make great use of a Cadcorp-provided tool to create isochrones. Using data derived from the ITN Layer, isochrones are in effect map contours based on travel times to locations rather than distances.'
The fact that the transport data also includes information on road layouts and road weight, width and height restrictions is also a big advantage – helping to get fire fighting equipment to a scene as soon as possible. Ray adds, 'Over the last 10 years we had surveyed the whole of London, capturing for ourselves all traffic-calming sites, one-way streets, restricted turns. We no longer have to do that. Thanks to ITN Layer, which contains the majority of that information and is updated on a frequent basis, we save cost, time and resource.'
Managing risk
LFB has also found that Ordnance Survey's GI has a role to play in identifying and managing the brigade's risks. Paul Eady is Risk Information Assistant Manager at LFB. He explains, 'In the UK each fire brigade is responsible for deciding and defining its own risks. That is why we have developed our own Incident Risk Analysis Toolkit (iRAT).'
The toolkit is designed to help LFB borough and station managers set priorities and plan their community and fire safety work where previously this was just based on a combination of incident history and local knowledge. Paul explains, 'Every quarter we run a statistical analysis to produce projections of the number of incidents for 17 different incident types at ward level for the whole of the LFB area.
'The output is a ranking table showing how each ward and each borough compares for the whole of London, segmented into domestic premises, commercial premises, deliberate or accidental incidents, severity of fire and so on.' He continues, 'We now have an application that automates the provision of a visual map-based representation of these projections.'
Paul points out, 'The iRAT approach provides borough managers with an aid to planning community safety initiatives within their particular areas. Automatic map generation has been a massive time saver for us and I'm sure the same kind of thing would be of great value to other brigades.'
Intelligent GI is at work throughout the public and private sectors – from the police and health services to insurance and utility companies. To find out more about how GI is relied on in Great Britain visit www.cadcorp.com and
www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business
Ordnance Survey, the OS Symbol and OS MasterMap are registered trademarks and Integrated Transport Network is a trademark of Ordnance Survey, the national mapping agency of Great Britain.
Cadcorp is a registered trademark of Computer Aided Development Corporation Ltd.
