You are in:
- EDITORIAL CONTENT » Civil Contingencies
Meeting risk planning targets in London
A corporate desktop and Web-based GIS developed with Cadcorp SIS and GeognoSIS.NET software is helping the London Fire Brigade meet its risk planning, operational planning and resource management targets...
The London Fire Brigade (LFB) is run by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and is part of a group of organisations operating under the ‘umbrella’ of the Greater London Authority. It is the third largest fire-fighting organisation in the world, with 111 fire stations (plus one River Thames-based station) from which it protects people and property from fire and deals with other emergencies within the 1,587 square kilometres of Greater London, with its resident population of some 7.4 million. This population is increased by another 500,000 each day during working hours.
In the year 2005/06 the London Fire Brigade answered some 268,000 emergency calls and attended nearly 156,000 incidents. The average time taken to answer these calls was four seconds. Perhaps more importantly though, a first fire engine arrived at an incident within eight minutes on 92% of occasions, meeting the Brigade’s target and within five minutes on nearly 65% of occasions. When required, a second fire engine arrived within ten minutes on 93% of occasions, exceeding the target.
Planning and management
However, the fire and rescue service of the 21st century is no longer only about response to incidents, fundamental though that obviously is. Risk planning and management is central to the work of the LFB, as it is to other fire and rescue services in the UK.
To help it continue to meet and exceed its performance targets, which themselves are under constant review and to manage risk planning, operational planning and resource management, the London Fire Brigade relies heavily on the latest in IT and geographic information systems (GIS) technology.
The LFB was no stranger to GIS before but in 2003 a dedicated team was put together to revisit the Brigade’s existing use and development of the technology. Until then, the use of GIS had been developed in a very piecemeal fashion utilising many different systems and was used primarily on the operational side of things. No structured work had been done on unlocking the potential of GIS as a corporate tool to examine, for example, the geographic spread of incidents and resource location.
A strategy document published by the team in 2004 recommended the provision of a desktop and Web-based corporate GIS solution that could be used by staff at all levels. While the desktop solution would provide full GIS functionality to key users, with the emphasis on data analysis, the results would be published on the Web-based solution for all users. However, the Web-based solution would not be just a map and data viewer but should include easy-to-use tools that would allow users to interact with the data.
The strategy document also made it clear that there was no intention, at least in the near term, of replacing existing GIS facilities incorporated into the LFB’s operational systems such as command, mobilising and command planning. Any new, corporate GIS therefore had to be ‘open’ enough to allow interaction with these other GIS data sources.
New corporate GIS
Cadcorp SIS – Spatial Information System desktop and GeognoSIS.NET Web-based GIS software was selected for the London Fire Brigade’s new corporate GIS, with a major factor behind the decision being the software’s openness through its ability to interoperate with some 150 native GIS, CAD, graphics and database formats, without translation.
In late 2005 the desktop solution was deployed to key users in information management, emergency planning, event planning and predetermined attendance while roll-out of the Web-based solution to all other staff was begun in the summer of 2006.
A useful tool
Developed using Cadcorp GeognoSIS.NET, the LFB’s Web-based GIS is known as IMapping and is already proving to be a useful tool for both operational and non-operational aspects of the Brigade’s activities. As well as being able to retrieve mapping data and provide the basic GIS functionality expected within Web-mapping software, IMapping allows the user to, for example, filter data, create and save user-drawn graphics, print using LFB-specific templates and search either by address or fire station location.
The first series of maps that went live displayed different incident types, such as dwelling fires or the location of malicious calls, over a three year period for all London boroughs. As well as showing the location of incidents and their associated attribute data, the data has also been thematically mapped using different geographies, such as London wards. This has already proved invaluable to borough commanders as an aid, for example, to planning community fire station initiatives within their particular areas.
Integration - the next step
The next stage for IMapping is to integrate it with systems that hold live data, such as the incident recording system and for it to be linked to the Brigade’s own Incident Risk Analysis Toolkit (IRAT) in order for it also to be useful in providing risk management information. In addition to incident mapping, IMapping will also be used to publish maps on event plans, such as the location of resources at major sporting events and to publish site maps under the Control of Major Accident Hazards (COMAH) regulations.
Meanwhile, the desktop GIS solution is being used to generate the map-based information that is published for use in various corporate-level activities, including emergency planning and risk management as well as for the presentation of performance statistics.
For example, the emergency planning department makes effective use of it as an aid to decision-making, with one of the main uses here being the production of maps for each COMAH site for inclusion in the overall COMAH plan. These maps include information on emergency service vehicle rendezvous points, sensitive sites of population, potential incident zones and sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) in the vicinity of a COMAH site.
Providing a clear picture
In risk management, patterns of fire and other incidents have been mapped throughout London to provide a clear picture of who is most at risk and where, with the information then being used to develop the London Safety Plan. Mapping and understanding these risk patterns is the responsibility of the LFB’s risk management team, which is currently involved in working with the national Fire Services Emergency Cover (FSEC) toolkit as well as developing the LFB’s own complementary, localised risk measurement and management model, IRAT.
The preparation and presentation of performance information is another key area for the use of the LFB’s new corporate GIS. For example, the quarterly reports on the distribution of incidents, which are used to help target resources, now contain themed maps. Based on incident information derived from various sources, the data is manipulated within the GIS to create themed incident maps by geography, such as borough, ward and fire station boundary and using various time-frames as well as ‘hot-spot’ maps to show significant clusters of incidents. Snapshot graphic representation of key performance indicators (KPIs), such as how well Home Office-set incident attendance times are met and the results of community fire safety initiatives, are also created with the corporate GIS.
Although it is still early days in terms of the development and deployment of the new corporate GIS, it is already clear that the balance in the use of GIS technology at the London Fire Brigade has shifted from a purely operational tool in the past to much more of a corporate tool today – to the benefit of everyone.
