Search results

The purpose of this paper was to examine the transformation of fire prevention processes via improved targeting of fire prevention interventions over a four-year period.

A four-year case study of the transformation of fire prevention processes involving a UK fire and rescue service, local council, National Health Service primary care trust and a police force was undertaken.

Understanding the socio-economic causal factors underlying unintentional dwelling fires, and the need to work in collaborative partnerships to achieve change in such factors can support more targeted and effective fire prevention activities.

Analysis of underlying causal factors and their relationships, together with population segmentation and working in coordinated collaborative partnerships, can support enhanced fire risk assessment and community safety. This supported more pro-active early intervention fire risk management.

Analysis of socio-economic causal factors and socio-economic groups associated with unintentional dwelling fires can assist in targeting fire prevention activities in a more effective and efficient manner. This enabled the fire and rescue service to target fire prevention to social groups most at risk of dwelling fires and the types of fires (for example, kitchen fires) relevant to the different social groups.

Collaborative public sector partnerships can achieve change in the socio-economic circumstances of at-risk individuals to support fire prevention. This enables the social- and health-related factors underlying fire risk to be addressed by the relevant partner health or social services agencies.

The detailed analysis of the transformation of fire prevention activities that led to an implemented approach to enhance community safety. In particular, the analysis and evaluation of the move to collaborative multi-agency partnerships to support and improve fire prevention activities.

Fire Prevention Week takes place during the week of 9 October, the date of the great Chicago fire. Fire prevention in the narrow sense refers to precautionary measures taken to prevent the outbreak of fires. In books, articles, and other materials on the subject, however, fire prevention often encompasses the broader terms of fire science, fire protection, and fire safety.

The law of catastrophic wildfire prevention and response in the Mediterranean member states of the European Union stands in stark contrast to that of common law nation states such as Australia and the United States. This is due primarily to the higher levels of reciprocal moral and legal obligations between governments and citizens established in various sources of European law. Focusing on the relationship between the EU, Spain, and the Autonomous Community of Catalonia within Spain, this chapter describes these three legal frameworks as they are nested within each other, followed by some case law examples of these laws in action. We compare and contrast the philosophical assumptions underlying the utilitarian cost–benefit approach to regulatory justification used in the United States with the precautionary principle model emblematic of the European Union, the member state of Spain, and its Autonomous Community of Catalonia. Regardless of approach, protection of the public health, safety, and welfare will only be as robust and effective as the government agencies that have that responsibility, and the degree of cooperation with those agencies of the citizens they serve.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of spatiotemporal analysis of the 3,506 fire incidents in the city of Manila from 2011 to 2016.

A spatiotemporal and statistical analysis was carried out to determine the pattern of fire incidents in the city of Manila.

Fire incidence in Manila did not exhibit any pattern in terms of time, day of the week or month of the year. However, fire incidence did exhibit a pattern in terms of location. Faulty electrical connections are the major cause of fires throughout the year and throughout the 14 municipalities of Manila. Thus, the null hypothesis stating that spatiotemporal characteristics of cases of fire in the city of Manila do not exhibit a pattern is partially rejected.

Future studies may investigate the influence of building maintenance, government control, and cooking and cigarette-disposal behaviors on fire occurrence. It is recommended that the study be replicated in other cities of Metro Manila.

Based on the causes and the spatiotemporal characteristics of fires, stakeholders (e.g. government, Bureau of Fire Protection, local government units (LGUs), communities and residents) can be informed about how to prevent fires. LGUs and government agencies can utilize the findings of this study in developing fire prevention programs for the municipalities with the highest incidence of fires.

These findings can serve as a basis for policy formulation and as a reference for the allocation of fire prevention resources and for the literature on strategic planning for fire prevention in Manila.

Community centers play a socio-economic and urban role of combining different communal necessities, that serve inhabitants, at different neighborhoods in cities. Their role emerged in importance as being a hub for improving and customizing quality of life experiences of the public. This research presents a code-based risk assessment tool for evaluating fire safety measures that can be adapted in the context of community centers. It also provides an exemplary case study to demonstrate its application.

The study identified the factors that render community centers as a high-risk type of facilities in fire events. Various fire codes and standards were reviewed to describe the relevant fire safety measures. A code-based fire risk assessment tool was developed and implemented, through a case study. A set of recommendations were developed to improve the fire safety conditions of the case study facility.

Several violations to fire safety were identified in the case study building. The findings led to identifying a set of recommendations to improve its fire safety conditions.

This research introduced a systematic approach to raise awareness about fire incidences and consequences in community centers, and provides facilities managers with a tool, to assess compliance based on international fire code requirements.

In fire events, community centers are considered as high-risk facilities that may lead to significant losses of human lives and damages to assets. It is significant to study the causes of fire, for ensuring effective prevention and safe operations.

Safe and Well visits are the primary preventative vehicle now used by all Fire and Rescue Services in England. The purpose of this paper is to examine their recent development to identify notable practice and potential improvements.

A literature review and archival document analysis have been supplemented by data and information from the evaluation of a case study at Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service.

There is considerable scope to improve Safe and Well visits, although individual services and the sector are not yet able to implement effective benchmarking across services or commission a more appropriate evaluation methodology such as a social return on investment.

The research is situationally bound to England, although there may be transferable lessons to other services and jurisdictions.

Potential future improvements are identified and recommended at local and national levels, both in the data and information available, and for policy, operationalisation and public assurance.

Although a small number of professional reviews have been undertaken, the authors are not aware of any academic evaluation of Safe and Well visits since they superseded the previous Home Fire Safety Checks.

The purpose of this paper is to implement an activity support system for volunteer fire corps using Web-GIS technology.

In this study, the authors implemented a volunteer fire corps activity support system comprising a dispatch request system, a water sources geographic information system, a fire-vehicle location confirmation system, a route history system and an integrated management system. They implemented this system as a Web application in consideration of responsive design assuming that it is used on mobile terminals.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, the authors conducted a survey of 18 fire corps volunteers who were asked to evaluate the system for operability, relevance, functionality, usability and effectiveness.

In this research work, the authors implemented the volunteer fire corps activity support system using Web-GIS technology. The authors conducted a questionnaire survey of the volunteer fire corps activity support system, asking 18 fire corps volunteers to evaluate the system for operability, relevance, functionality, usability and effectiveness. The results of the survey indicate an overwhelming positive response to the volunteer fire corps activity support system for all five measures.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how fire services use social media to educate the public about safety and fire prevention.

Grounded theoretical methods were employed in a rigorous qualitative analysis of five significant fire services’ Twitter accounts in Ontario, Canada.

Seven main themes emerged from the data, with an overarching conclusion that tweets made by fire service organisations and professionals do not focus primarily on fire safety.

This paper addresses a gap in the literature in terms of understanding how social media communicates information about all three lines of defence against fire, with a focus on the first two: public fire safety education, fire safety standards and enforcement and emergency response.

The authors suggest that fire services need to employ a more segmented approach to social media posts with an objective to engage and educate the public.

This paper is the first extensive qualitative analysis to consider the particulars of fire services’ social media presence.

The last 15 years have seen the rapid growth of fire science education and training in the United States. This growth was noted by the Advisory Committee on Fire Training and Education (see Education below). Currently, the Federal Government and a majority of states maintain fire academies for the training of fire personnel. The 1983 Peterson's Guide to Two and Four Year Colleges lists over 300 entries under the headings fire science and fire protection management. In addition, a number of industries and professions have a direct interest in the literature of fire science, including insurance, architecture, construction, building maintenance, forestry, and criminal justice. This review shall concentrate on materials that should be in the reference section of any educational institution offering courses in fire science. We have not included materials that are considered general reference sources for the study of public administration, which include much material on that aspect of fire service, such as the Municipal Yearbook or Pay Rates in the Public Service.

Fire in British industry extracts an appalling toll of lives, jobs, materials, and machinery. New legislation now has teeth to do something about it. But management could do a lot more, says Alec Snobel in this special survey.