Improving Fire Prevention Planning Using GIS

Esri and the Institute of Fire Engineers (IFE)-hosted Vision 20/20 project, USA, have partnered to improve fire prevention planning through the use of simple risk analysis capabilities that include computer mapping and demographic analysis. The methods are being developed by teams of subject-matter experts from both organisations and will be made available at no cost to fire departments across the United States.

They will show public safety staff how to more effectively identify high-risk neighbourhoods and create focused fire prevention programs. The resources will be incorporated into community risk reduction training offered by the Vision 20/20 project, including free online courses currently under development.

Vision 20/20 has been closely involved in the development of the Community Risk Reduction (CRR) effort across the nation. A key part of CRR is how fire departments partner with social services organisations within their communities to do fire safety outreach. This partnership between Esri and Vision 20/20 will help fire fighters develop strategies and tactics to promote community safety that are more focused on the demographics where it is needed.

Esri is supporting Vision 20/20 by supplying its software and data as part of fire department training. IFE is dedicated to promoting the improvement of the science and practice of fire engineering, prevention, and suppression through better risk assessments. Esri staff will participate in the training to teach fire department staff how to use Esri demographic resources combined with an organisation's incident data to map where to increase education and home safety visits. For instance, agencies can map and identify where incidence of fires with non-working smoke alarms has been high and where increased outreach is needed. In addition, the agencies can identify low-income housing where more education focusing on the use of working smoke alarms would be of benefit. Public safety professionals can take advantage of Esri mapping capabilities to quickly and accurately use data and pinpoint at-risk neighbourhoods.