If an analysis of your fire department's deployment of resources consists of sitting down with pencil, paper and a calculator, heads up. Today's complex environment requires fire chiefs to embrace more sophisticated planning tools.

The public demands shorter response times, firefighter union locals stage public protests to resist reductions in paid-personnel deployment, and city managers and council officials want it all — rapid response within tight budgets.

Using information technology specifically developed for fire departments, the Fremont Fire Department in Northern California has taken the lead in this area by employing a systems approach to the strategic deployment of fire suppression and emergency medical resources.

The Fremont Fire Department had never had a formal standard-of-cover policy for geographic coverage for fire suppression and emergency services when Chief Willie McDonald took over the department in November 2002. Although he had inherited a voter-approved $51 million bond measure to renovate and replace fire stations, he wasn't bound to a deadline or to specific locations for new stations.

“I realized that the passage of the bond measure really provided an opportunity for the department to create an SOC that would be based on viewing our deployment of resources as a system influenced by many factors,” McDonald says. “I did not assume that the current placement of stations was appropriate.”

Coverage requirements

The last thing he wanted was to hold a grand opening for a new station that was structurally state-of-the-art but functionally obsolete, so McDonald authorized the formation of an SOC committee composed of senior staff. To assist the committee, he enlisted the consulting services of CityGate Associates LLC, a firm that had conducted SOC studies nationwide.

CityGate uses a comprehensive approach to resources deployment, with measures such as travel and response times, directional workloads, risk assessment, call stacking, and daytime versus nighttime scenarios, to develop a comprehensive picture of coverage requirements. This method contrasts with prescriptive models that call for a certain number of firefighters to respond within a certain time period regardless of those risk factors within a jurisdiction that can cause huge inefficiencies.

CityGate consultants recommended that Fremont Fire acquire FireView mapping software developed by The Omega Group Inc. in San Diego. The software combines geographic mapping with dispatch incident data analysis to perform all the typical SOC study steps.

“FireView is a managerial tool and not merely a justification tool,” says Ronny J. Coleman, senior associate of CityGate's fire protection and emergency services division. “It allows fire executives to develop options on planning policy based on rational consequences of the data analysis rather than relying on the intuitiveness of what appears to be rational.”

Indeed, McDonald points out that two of the city's 11 stations were very near each other and closing the older of the two seemed to make sense. However, he says that the software “would soon show us that the workloads of these two departments were practically in opposite directions and that closure would not be in the best interest of public safety.”

Budget cuts

The need for an SOC study became even more pressing when Fremont City Manager Jan Perkins sounded an alarm of a different sort. She informed the chief and other department heads that the city was facing the worst fiscal crisis in its history. The city of 208,000 residents is located within Silicon Valley, home to thousands of high-tech companies. The fall of the Nasdaq market over the last two years mirrored the struggling local economy. The city's sales tax revenue was in decline.

The result was that the fire department's operating budget would be cut by nearly 20% that year and in succeeding fiscal years. Worse yet, the reductions needed to be implemented immediately, and McDonald would have to present his recommendations for meeting the downsized budget to the city council within a matter of weeks.

Although he had to respond rapidly, McDonald also knew that his recommendations had to be based on comprehensive analysis. The city council and the community would want to be certain that his budgetary solutions weren't coming at the expense of increased risk to the public. The situation had to be studied according to those same key variables used in the ongoing SOC committee study.

“Fortunately, it was the head start that we allowed ourselves by making the decision to do a systems analysis of our standard of coverage … that put us in a position to leverage our data,” McDonald emphasizes. “That's the real key to successful resources planning.”

The analysis examined the directional workloads of the stations during day and night shifts to identify where stations were substantially overlapping in their actual response zones. The software produced spider diagrams in which each thread or finger represented a run from the station to the call premises, enabling McDonald to visually map where the calls were concentrating geographically. The station with a response zone that intersected with the zones of other stations would be the most likely candidate for closure. By examining each station in this way, McDonald was able to identify which station could be closed without harm to public safety.

Data-based solution

Using the systems approach supported by the software allowed McDonald to avoid challenges to his recommendation. Because the union local was allowed to participate on the SOC committee, it was able to see for itself that the process was transparent and completely data-driven. As McDonald notes, “It was not a solution based on any sort of hidden agenda. FireView gave the union insight as to the consequences of various options.”

But even more telling was the reaction he received when he sat down with Perkins to review with her the findings of his study before bringing it before the city council. As the chief recounts, “The computerized images … were so demonstrative that without hesitation she agreed with my recommendation, saying ‘It's the right thing to do,’ and that I should begin implementation without waiting for formal city council action, as she would tell the members that this was the only way to proceed.”

McDonald's solution was not the most politically popular. “There were other options that on the surface appeared more acceptable,” he explains, “such as putting some stations on a part-time schedule and moving companies around to keep all the stations opened. However, this option wouldn't have been sound. But the data revealed graphically … made us confident that we could make the case for our deployment plan.”

A systems approach to deployment of resources backed by FireView put Fremont Fire in the position of planning expert.

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Russ Johnson is the public safety solutions manager for ESRI. He has served as the fire chief and deputy fire chief for the San Bernardino national forest in California.