Envisioning the Future of the Fire Service

Two decades of internet and data improvements have transformed daily life — but the fire service has been left behind. This analysis explores how data and connectivity solutions could revolutionize the responder workflow, from dispatch to the fireground to post-incident reporting.

How data and connectivity solutions can revolutionize the responder workflow Over the past couple decades, improvements in internet speed and our understanding and utilization of data have transformed much of our daily lives. We went from playing board games to playing multi-player RPG on our iPhones. Instead of purchasing and waiting a couple hours to download a movie to our hard drives, we can now stream it live, over the cloud, on-demand, based on our personal preference established by our data inputs, on practically any device. In fact, it’s not just the everyday lives that became more convenient and interesting due to the development of technologies. The first response industry is also a beneficiary, and we’re beginning to see within the start-up ecosystem a myriad of ventures targeting different parts of the responder workflow to solve for the current inefficiencies. Below is an illustrative landscape of a number of relevant players based on the responder workflow bifurcation between pre-scene and at-scene applications. Pre-scene Applications Here, pre-scene entails all the communication and processes that take place prior to the responder team arriving at the scene of the incident. At the information delivery level, an illustrative example is FirstDue , an NYC-based venture that specializes in aggregating and communicating critical pieces of information (e.g., tenant/resident information, building structure, location of nearby hydrant) to nearby fire agencies and responders that are en route to the scene. With these pieces of information at the fingertips, the response team can then not only park the truck at the most optimal location around the building, but also plan around different nuances such as the source of fire, point of entrance into building, characteristics of people involved in the incident e.g., infant, pet, pregnant woman. At the aerial overview level, companies like Impossible Aerospace develop deployable first response-ready drones that can g

By Multiple Authors at TechNexus Venture Collaborative