Fire Appliance Dynamic Mobilisation - Martin Collins

Fire appliance mobilising in Kent and Medway – Use of data in the past, present and future

Martin Collins

Introduction• What do we mean by ‘mobilising’?

– Getting the right resource to the right place at the right time.

Emergency

999 Call

The Control Room

Address selected from gazetteer

Type of response decided

Statuses of resources checked

Nearest resource(s) selected

Instructions to mobilise sent.

Fire Station

Fire crew alerted

Fire crew assemble

Fire appliance departs

Incident location

The past• Used a System known as ‘MOBS’ provided by Thales.• Travel times created in a external routing analysis

software package.• Database of static travel times from fixed locations (Fire

Stations).• Reliant on the concept of ‘station grounds’.

A

DC

B

The present• Moved to using Sopra Steria Storm in July 2015.• Collaborative working with Kent Police.

– Shared Control Room– Savings from shared infrastructure

The present• Storm allows vehicle position based mobilising.• Requires a road network for ‘routing’.• Based on Ordnance Survey data courtesy of PSMA.• Customisation to better fit blue light journeys:

– Emergency access points– Local knowledge of accessible tracks– Representation of congestion hotspots.

• Currently 217,000 road sections representing 14,500 miles.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service © Crown Copyright 100033707 2017

The current process• 999 Call received.• Location chosen from the gazetteer.• Incident location ‘snapped’ to network.• Storm filters resources to those within a set range.• Filtered resources ‘snapped’ to network.• Journey costs calculated using RouteWare engine.

The current process• Journey cost can be affected by:

– Road section attributes – Restrictions– Time of day– Vehicle type

• Other data sources used to check:– Availability– Suitability

• Appliances offered to Control Operator.– Ability to override

• Appliances mobilised

Antagonist data (Inverse synergy)

© Google 2017

The future• Regular updates using Ordnance Survey data.

– ITN and Highways in the future.• Analysing and employing data collected from emergency

response.• Using digital data to confirm analogue data.• Exploring other sources of data.

Kent Fire and Rescue Service © Crown Copyright 100033707 2017

Conclusions• Using vehicle location based mobilising requires:

– Considerable maintenance of the road network.– Knowledge and understanding of the data available.– Reliable positional data from resources.

• Ability to accurately mobilise is only possible thanks to the work of the National Address Gazetteer custodians.

• Improved response times?