With a major grant from the research section of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program (the Fire Act) five top research organizations are collaborating to develop tools that will help local fire departments better assess the risks in their local communities and plan to respond to them more effectively and efficiently.

The three-year project, being conducted jointly by the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE), the International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC), the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), will establish a technical basis for risk evaluation and deployment of resources by local fire departments and create tools the departments can use to better assess the risks in their communities; plan adequate resource deployment to respond to and mitigate emergency events; and measure their effectiveness in responding to and handling events.

In Phase 1 of the three-year project, experts are bringing together project technical advisors and a stakeholder group to identify and quantify community risks and necessary resource deployment. In addition, one of the principal tasks of Phase 1 is to evaluate the technical foundation of VISION, a web-based software tool developed by Emergency Reporting (Emergency Reporting worked with the CPSE to convert the software program RHAVE into the web-based system.) VISION currently enables fire and emergency service agencies to analyze and categorize the risks in their communities.

As part of the study, fire scientists are developing and testing mathematic models representing risks, fire movement, and various interventions for mitigating a fire or EMS event. In Phase II, they will collect hazard and response measurements that will form the technical basis for the model. Phase III will be devoted to validating and beta-testing the software for accuracy and ease-of-use. Once complete, VISION software will be re-released through CPSE. All purchasers of the original version of VISION will receive updated versions as they become available.

For a free demonstration of the VISION software, please contact us!