At the core of it, the ability of the community to measure through the PPC program the relative effect of improvements in a fire protection program is significant. We have a lot of interaction with the fire service around the country and a lot of educational programs. We're at conventions and conferences, and [communicate] through our field representatives deployed across the country, our management staff, and our home office staff in [New] Jersey….

The rating system focuses only on fire and not on other hazards or responses.

Fire departments have many variable charges these days that run from homeland security to EMS activities to terrorism response. The list of duties is endless … and the fire chief can point to the possibilities, but it's the insurers that have the final say [on setting premiums]. The fire chief can say to the mayor, city council or their counterparts, “I've met with ISO, done the research and if I do the following things, I may positively affect my public protection classification or I may be able to retain my classification even in a high-growth period of demand on a community or department.” That's a unique ability to project a possible financial effect of improved fire protection compared to something else.

There are a lot of important people with a lot of important responsibilities on their shoulders if you look around a city council and on departments. The fire chief can say, “if I build another station, if I'm able to equip my engines and ladders and truck companies with the following equipment or work with my counterpart in the water department or improve water protection in an area that was not served, I can show community-wide improvement or building improvement.”

To go back to your point about ISO's obsolescence, I would say that the program continues to deliver the message and the results that improved fire protection matters and can be measured in many regards as it is utilized in the PPC program.

How many fire departments are currently rated and classified?

We have evaluated almost 46,000 fire protection areas. A fire protection area is usually a community boundary; it could be a city, it could be a town or even a county, but it could also include subdivisions of communities from a fire protection or fire districts. In the Midwest and Northeast there are many fire districts that make up a town, three or four sometimes. Of those 46,000 fire protection areas visited by a field representative, an evaluation is conducted and a classification is produced.

How many field representatives does ISO currently have?

[There are] a total of 650 full-time employees of ISO. They are trained by ISO and given equipment by ISO for data collections: laptop and broadband connections. Almost all have a company car and they are exclusively our employees working from their homes and connected to us electronically, along with digital cameras that are GPS-enhanced. Of the 650, we have 90 field representatives focused directly on fire protection, building-code enforcement and flood mitigation, and the balance are devoted toward our commercial property activities.

What about ISO's lack of credit for advances in technology such as foam systems, GIS and aerials over 100 feet?

The matter of staying with technology is one for which we rely on the NFPA and the American Waterworks Association. Our methodology reflects the most current NFPA standards, so as the standards change, our evaluations change with it.

The other aspect is through the use of technology we have never had a higher demand for detailed information that insurers are now asking ISO to provide than today. Through a geographic information-based system, we have proactively mapped current fire station locations, the response area boundaries, the existence of automatic aid agreements, and the existence of public water or hauled water that meets ISO criteria. These are all mapped into a GIS-based platform and insurers — over 100 of them — are receiving information electronically as [are] the remaining 1,100 insurers that are participants in our ISO rating and underwriting information. We find that the demand for and our ability to meet insurers' needs has never been higher.

Fire chiefs can now update changes in their departments online.

On Fire Chiefs Online [a password-protected Web site at www.isomitigation.org] we have over 6,000 fire chiefs signed up. We have a proactive program to detect change where it exists around the country, and there are many changes that we refer to as our community outreach program.

Through the outreach program, we call ahead, send a questionnaire and receive responses from fire chiefs that tell us where changes are occurring. They are also given a map and can update the information online. Through Fire Chiefs Online their answers are cached for future reference, they can also see an interactive map of their protection area and can alert us of changes. They can print a small map or request a large map.

The Web site also offers fire chiefs all the commercial property information inventory. In a large community this could be thousands of buildings, or in a smaller community it could be several hundred. What we're allowing fire chiefs to see without charge is a customized summary report — rather than insurance jargon — on the construction, occupancy protection, sprinkler installed and receiving credit and whether or not there are any hazardous processes. These are all buildings that have been visited by ISO field representatives around the country and is truly the basis on which insurers are making decisions, being the same database that an insurer is seeing.