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?