Presentation of Åsa Weinholt and Tobias Andersson Granberg on the topic "Evaluation of enhanced collaboration between fire and rescue services and security officers" at ISCRAM2013

1. Evaluation of Enhanced Collaboration between
Fire and Rescue Services and Security Officers
- A cost-benefit analysis
Åsa Weinholt PhD Student
asa.weinholt@liu.se
Tobias Andersson Granberg
tobias.andersson@liu.se
Department of Communication and Transport Systems

2. 2
Using new actors as first responders has been suggested as a solution to
decrease response time and increase the number of resources
available in small scale crisis in the Swedish Emergency Response
System.

3. New actors within response and rescue

4. Background
4
The municipalities in Sweden are
responsible for the fire and rescue
service (FRS)
Scarce resources
New actors might be a cost effective
way of improving the FRS.
The importance of the time factor

5. The hypothesis of this study is that collaboration between fire
and rescue services and security officers might be a cost-
effective way to reduce response time and improve emergency
response.
5

6. The importance of the time factor in fire and rescue operations
in Sweden
(Juås & Mattsson 1997, Jaldell 2004)
6
Costs
Response
time
Cost 5 min
5 min 10 min
Cost 10 min

7. 7
Methodology
• Three municipalities has been studied
• Interviews with representatives from the FRS,
the security officers and security managers.
• Incident reports from both the FRS and the
security officers.
• Cost-Benefit Analysis
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8. The collaboration
• The security officers receives the alarm at same time as the
FRS.
• Since they are constantly on patrol they can reach the incident
scene fast.
• Education
• Extinguishing materials
• Communication tools
“The citizens want to get help fast, they do not care were the help
comes from”
8

9. Results
BENEFITS COSTS
Reduced response times Extinguishing material and refill
Situational awareness Radio sets/beepers
Keys and good local knowledge Medical kits
Preventive work Training and education
Additional tasks during the
response work
Turn-out cost for security officers
9

10. Results
Incident reports from
the security officers
Nr. of
identified
reports
Security
officers reach
the accident
scene before
the FRS
Reports with
substantial
contribution
from security
officers
Fire in building 5 3 0
Fire not in building 12 11 7
Automatic alarm (false
alarms)
23 16 0
Traffic accident 10 4 0
Other 10 6 0
Total nr. of reports 60 40 7
10

11. Results
11
Benefits: ∆𝑡𝑖 × 𝑝𝑖 × 𝑣𝑖 = 𝐵𝑖
𝑛
𝑖=1
𝑛
𝑖=1 = 𝐵
- In the seven cases the fire chief estimated that the security officers
proportion of the total effort was 100 %.
- In five of these cases they suppressed fires with no risk for diffusion
or large social costs.
- Two of the cases implied substantial risk for spreading and damage.
- Value of benefits ~ € 𝟐𝟎 𝟎𝟎𝟎 𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚

12. Costs:
- Material
- Education
- Turn-out costs
- ~ € 𝟐𝟓𝟎𝟎 𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒖𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒚
- 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝒔𝒐𝒄𝒊𝒂𝒍 𝒏𝒆𝒕 𝒃𝒆𝒏𝒆𝒇𝒊𝒕 ~ € 17 500
12

13. Conclusions
• The benefits from time savings amount to 8 times the invested
amount.
• Even if the benefits are uncertain we can conclude that the
costs are low.
• Several non-valuable positive effects benefits are
underestimated.
• This study highlights the difficulties of evaluating rescue
operations quantitatively.
• Not enough data to do sensitivity analysis.
• Need for improved information systems.
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14. Future work
• Needs analysis
- Information systems (reporting, communication)
- Education
• Study the potential of scheduling patrol routes for security
officers, taking into account their increased responsibilities as
first responders
• Specify different accidents types where new actors are most
valuable.
• New actors in large scale crisis
• Other potential actors
• Etc.
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