Predictive ability for emergency service requests represents a great potential for a safer community and cost-savings. The ability to predict the everyday variety of crimes, fires, and emergency medical calls is within reach. After 9-11, the trend toward information analysis and intelligence in law enforcement accelerated rapidly. Business intelligence analysis software and geographic information system technology has found its way into policing, not just in large urban areas but in small towns as well. National databases and information sharing among all levels of law enforcement make it possible to reduce the risk of terrorism threats.

It also works for the crimes that a city such as Richmond, Virginia experiences routinely. An information management system for predictive crime analysis includes elements for data mining, reporting, and mapping with GIS software. Police officers receive the estimations or predictions for crime hot spots before their shift begins. The result is positive action taken to prevent crimes rather than a reaction to a crime already committed. Using the system, the city lowered its dangerous city rating in one year, dropping from fifth highest to number fifteen. The goal of these systems is to replicate the “intuitive nature” of a highly experienced police officer. Data collection is the key. Without baseline data, such systems have no predictive value also critical is a records management system that facilitates data mining.   

While this approach has application for arson crimes, attempting the same for building fires is unfortunately more problematic. Some progress in this regard is underway as a team of Australian geographers works with the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service for the purpose of better allocating fire service resources and save lives. In the terminology of geographic analysis, the research team is investigating the spatial-temporal arrangement of urban fires and their association with weather conditions, calendar events, and socio-economic conditions. The area protected by this particular fire service has a large migrant population. The budgets of urban fire-rescue services are limited and thus essential that managers and planners understand the underlying forces that drive where, when and why fires start.        

Using disaggregated fire incident data form Queensland Fire and Rescue Service subsequently aggregated to the Statistical Local Area, the team used the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ defined index of socio-economic disadvantage (SEIFA) as the basis to identify relationships between socio-economic disadvantage and building fires. They then used a regression model to develop predictions for the incidence of building fires over a range of socio-economic variables.

The geographers identified five significant predictors: percentage of unemployed, proportion of indigenous population, families living in separate dwellings, one parent, and parent families with children less than fifteen years of age. This study shows that mapping urban (building) fires for informed decision-making and resource allocation has potential for further application in other areas to validate the results.

Predictive ability for emergency service requests represents a great potential for a safer community and cost-savings. The ability to predict the everyday variety of crimes, fires, and emergency medical calls is within reach. After 9-11, the trend toward information analysis and intelligence in law enforcement accelerated rapidly. Business intelligence analysis software and geographic information system technology has found its way into policing, not just in large urban areas but in small towns as well. National databases and information sharing among all levels of law enforcement make it possible to reduce the risk of terrorism threats.

It also works for the crimes that a city such as Richmond, Virginia experiences routinely. An information management system for predictive crime analysis includes elements for data mining, reporting, and mapping with GIS software. Police officers receive the estimations or predictions for crime hot spots before their shift begins. The result is positive action taken to prevent crimes rather than a reaction to a crime already committed. Using the system, the city lowered its dangerous city rating in one year, dropping from fifth highest to number fifteen. The goal of these systems is to replicate the “intuitive nature” of a highly experienced police officer. Data collection is the key. Without baseline data, such systems have no predictive value also critical is a records management system that facilitates data mining.   

While this approach has application for arson crimes, attempting the same for building fires is unfortunately more problematic. Some progress in this regard is underway as a team of Australian geographers works with the Queensland Fire and Rescue Service for the purpose of better allocating fire service resources and save lives. In the terminology of geographic analysis, the research team is investigating the spatial-temporal arrangement of urban fires and their association with weather conditions, calendar events, and socio-economic conditions. The area protected by this particular fire service has a large migrant population. The budgets of urban fire-rescue services are limited and thus essential that managers and planners understand the underlying forces that drive where, when and why fires start.        

Using disaggregated fire incident data form Queensland Fire and Rescue Service subsequently aggregated to the Statistical Local Area, the team used the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ defined index of socio-economic disadvantage (SEIFA) as the basis to identify relationships between socio-economic disadvantage and building fires. They then used a regression model to develop predictions for the incidence of building fires over a range of socio-economic variables.

The geographers identified five significant predictors: percentage of unemployed, proportion of indigenous population, families living in separate dwellings, one parent, and parent families with children less than fifteen years of age. This study shows that mapping urban (building) fires for informed decision-making and resource allocation has potential for further application in other areas to validate the results.

There is a repository of historic fire insurance maps containing information that could be vital to your current work especially if you work in commercial real estate, development, urban planning, or insurance. I am referring to the collection of fire insurance maps retained by and offered through EDR as the Certified Sanborn® Map Report. This is a collection containing the original fire insurance maps of American cities and towns drafted by the field survey crews of the Sanborn Map Company. Crews mapped as many as 12,000 American cities and towns starting from the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. They collected information critical to fire insurance underwriters. The fire underwriters needed to know information about the risk associated with the building in question, its’ use, nearby structures, occupancies of those structures, location of fire hydrants, and generally the surrounding area. They mapped areas at large scale to provide the rich details. They noted construction methods, type of building materials used, processes undertaken inside buildings, and storage. Because the Sanborn crews returned approximately every 10 years, the maps represent a long-term record of land usage. Today this information is useful to developers who want to know about hidden risks, land use planners seeking the history of a location and its’ previous uses, and environmental historians. EDR supplements the digital Sanborn map with a series of historic aerial images by decade, city directories, as well as USGS topographic maps. EDR certifies the package of maps and images as accurate to a set of standards so that the information is in a sense validated for any potential legal issues.

As a rural state covering a large extent, as well as having a diverse population, Maine communities face a challenge in providing for and maintaining effective local fire protection. As a local system, fire departments face the challenge head on and frequently the answer is found working with neighboring communities and other fire departments in their respective counties. It is useful then to consider the distribution and coverage of fire services, in the aggregate, at the county level. Here are three maps showing how firefighters add up at the county level in Maine.

The first map shows how fire departments are staffed by type of personnel be they paid, paid-on-call, or volunteer. 

  The next map shows the number of firefighters per capita, based on the county population.

Forget the traditional road map for a minute, the road map we are referring to here is really a process of evaluation leading to strategic planning. It is an in-depth analysis of how the fire department deploys its resources.  Why is that important? Well, consider the investment a community makes inproviding fire protection services. That investment is a cost like any other public service and should be subject to the same control and management applied to other municipal department budgets.  

The cost of public fire protection in the US is significant and rising, as are the losses caused by fires. American communities, in part because of our national culture, have always assumed the burden of providing public fire protection. In most cases, public fire protection is simply the fire department. Unfortunately, from the national to the state to the local level, we pay only lip service to technical efficiencies such as automatic firesprinkler systems and fire codes that could help to reduce fire protection costs. Requiring the installation of automatic fire sprinkler systems reduces total loss in dollars due to fire and helps to save lives and by implication, automatic sprinkler systems could ultimately help to reduce the cost of public fire protection.

While sprinkler systems reduce fire losses, do not reduce the need for a fire department they simply allow for a smaller and more efficient one. Since we are not moving toward a universal mandate for sprinklers, we should instead seek efficiencies in how we manage and deploy fire services.  Funded in the municipal budget, the local fire department competes for tax dollars as do the police, public works, and school system. To highlight efficiencies, police chiefs long ago recognized the value of agency accreditation to validate the management controls applied within their individual departments. Within the past few years, fire chiefs have begun to recognize the value of national accreditation.

The foundation of fire service accreditation rests upon the so-called standard of cover (or the SOC). The SOC is actually a creation of the British Fire Service. In Great Britain, the Home Office used the SOC to manage their collective fire services nationalized after WW II. It only took 50 years for this revolutionary concept to make its way across the big pond to America. Today, the best and most effective American fire departments have developed their own standard of cover to qualify and quantify the level of service provided.

By definition, the standard of cover consists of…those written procedures that determine the distribution and concentration of fixed and mobile resources of a fire agency within a given community. (Source: (http://publicsafetyexcellence.org) The SOC is applicable fulltime and volunteer fire departments, both large and small. At its core, the SOC defines the most appropriate levels of service for a community based on risk and available resources because no one size fits all.  PolicyOne recently conducted a resource deployment study for the Fire Departmentof the City of Lewiston, Maine. A large part of that evaluation included a study of fire station locations using GIS software. PolicyOne provides basic and advanced analysis of municipal fire services. See what we have to offer by visiting our fire service webpage at: http://www.policyoneresearch.com/FireService.asp

Reprinted from the USFA release of 21 July 2009:

The International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) Technology Council, in partnership with the U.S. Fire Administration, has produced a new podcast, The Power of GIS. This 10 minute video offers a quick tutorial for fire chiefs and decision makers interested in using GIS. The video has 3 components: understanding GIS, partnering with the GIS community, and seeing the power of GIS.

PolicyOne recently completed a location intelligence study for the city of Lewiston, Maine involving an in-depth analysis of fire station location. The city has four fire stations. While the location of the existing stations serves the historic central core of the city, there is some concern that development beyond the core city may require new stations in the future. The study employed the use of GIS software to analyze geographic and demographic data, the city's road network, and E-911 call center data for fire responses.

Our analysis revealed that current deployment of fire department resources mostly met existing needs. However, the maps created in GIS to compare response times within the existing street network showed that continued development in the fringe areas of the city will eventually require at least one new fire station. The advantage of having this study is that the city now knows where future problems may surface and may begin developing a strategic plan to address the issue. The Insurance Services Office (ISO) and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) provide guidelines for fire department response time and fire station coverage. This study used those guidelines in the analysis.

In 2008, the ISO commissioned a survey of the nation's fire chiefs. The findings revealed a growing problem in the nation's local fire departments with staffing, fire station location, and firefighting water supplies. Unchecked residential and commercial development in many rural and suburban areas of the United States has forced local fired departments to increase service without a corresponding increase in resources. More often than not, local fire chiefs are scrambling for new options to enhance service delivery. PolicyOne is well qualified to assist communities with fire service deployment studies and strategic planning.

 (1) ISO/ORC opinion survey accessed online, 6 June 2009: <http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2008/12/02/95955.htm>

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A previous article here introduced the idea of information-rich maps created for studying and understanding business operations. The concept and application of location-based information is widely known as location intelligence. In 2007, BusinessWeek and Pitney Bowes MapInfo surveyed 1,700 C-level executives of large organizations. The report titled Location Intelligence: The New Geography of Business explores the benefits of location intelligence, offers real world results, and shares key findings from the BusinessWeek Research Services survey on the technology gap that business leaders must overcome to compete more effectively. In brief, the survey found that more than 80 percent of all data maintained by organizations around the world has a location component. Associated technology and specialized analysis helps executives and enterprise-level users make critical business decisions using economics, demographics, physical geography, and other data pertaining to location. Location intelligence helps to identify patterns, risks, and opportunities often difficult to see in a traditional, basic spreadsheet analysis. Location intelligence is particularly suited for financial, insurance, communications, and retail operations.

 (2) BusinessWeek Research Services survey accessed online, 6 June 2009: <http://media.govtech.net/RC_PITNEYBOWES/BusinessWeek.pdf>

Location intelligence is to business as geospatial intelligence is to the military. Maps are not created equally a good map is “intelligent” because of intent and design. Images plus graphics plus analysis “fuse” to equal the intelligent map. The availability of relatively in expensive aerial and satellite imagery (think Google Earth) adds an exciting new dimension to the art and science of location intelligence. We starve for high quality, information rich maps when the technology and expertise to solve location and logistic problems is abundant and economical to access. In future postings, I will explore this topic further. Until then, take a moment to look at any maps you may come across. Ask yourself if it is an intelligent map. Read more about smart maps andvisualization of geographic data at VectorOne Media blog.