Fire departments fight fires, but they also deal with an awful lot of other incidents. Often this is by virtue of being the only ones with the training and tools to get the job done. On route to an incident in a large city, they may have an average of around four minutes to prepare for what they are likely to encounter when they arrive.

Data comes to them from multiple sources simultaneously – radio contact from the control room, alerts via mobile devices and tablets, a touch screen information panel mounted in the response vehicle, or a mountain of technical manuals and literature on firefighting regulations and procedure.

Now, forward-thinking fire services are looking at how this information can be best used to make sure that firefighters arrive at the scene fully equipped not just with the right tools, but the right data to get the job done.

Bart Van Leeuwen, a senior firefighter with the City of Amsterdam Fire Department, who also runs the data consultancy Netage, says “What I’m afraid of is that something will happen to me or one of my colleagues and we will find out that we had the data to stop it happening.

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