Fire fighters on their way to a fire have no idea of what they will find until they turn up and see with their own eyes.When they turn up, what they can see is often limited by smoke. It may even be dark.Each fire fighter can only see a small part of the fire and must describe, by radio or phone, what they can see to the operations center..The operations center must manually piece together these individual verbal descriptions to generate an overall picture of the fire.The operations center must use this information to ensure a coordinated response, but they also do not know where the responders are located.The operations center must use this imperfect information to provide advice to the community who may make, potentially, life changing decisions based on this uncertain information….…or the operations center could wait until the information is more certain which may mean waiting until after the community has already been impacted.The community often has real-time local knowledge about the fire that could be of benefit to the emergency authority but there is no mechanism for them to pass on what they know.Executives and public information officers need to talk to the media based on this uncertain and/or out of date information.
Typical response scenario with zirkarta
On their way to a fire, responders can see known hazards and advantages resulting from local knowledge, implemented prevention activities and previous incidents providing them with situational awareness before they even arrive. Every responder can also see the real time location of every responder.When they turn up, each fire fighter plots the part of the fire they can see which is automatically compiled into an overall picture visible to all fire fighters in real time.The map showing assets and advantages, the location of fire fighters and the location of the fire collaboratively plotted by fire fighters is visible in the operations center in real time.The operations center can coordinate a response by sending fire fighters messages and tasks and illustrating things such as areas of responsibility (sectors) on the map which are visible to fire fighters in real time.Pre-determined information is visible to the community within seconds of being plotted by fire fighters at the scene of the fire.Community members can add local knowledge to a map which is visible in the operations center in real time to help inform decision making.Executives can see, on any device, information that is seconds old automatically compiled from data entered by fire fighters and operations centers at multiple simultaneous fires. If required, they can drill into the detail of individual fires.