Focus on London Fire Brigade
FIRE talks to London Fire Brigade about its life saving Electronic Premises Information Plates
I
Pa
vil io
nP ub
lis
hin g
an dM ed
t is an Orwellian start to the conversation about London Fire Brigade’s use of geographical data, when Chris O’Connor, Data Systems Manager, says that the corporate gazetteer allows the Brigade to have “one version of the truth”. Chris talks about the layering of datasets to enhance the gazetteer – enhancing the truth. The unique property reference number (UPRN) is the “magic key” to access a wide range of systems and link them together. “What do we know about that building?” asks Chris. Well, it seems that London Fire Brigade knows rather a lot about buildings, but how does that affect service delivery? From a computer screen in Brigade headquarters, it is easy to see the map of London, pinpoint a building and look around the environs to spot nearby hydrants and potential hazards. Transfer that to a firefighter or fire inspector on the ground, using a hand held device with limited access to data, it is hard to know the height of a building when you have never been there before; even harder to know if there are problems in the building based on others’ previous visits. So, what has London Fire Brigade done to make life for these staff just a bit better and how can data help? Looking specifically at buildings over six stories high (c.1,700 across London), the Brigade has created Electronic
ia
Lt d
London’s award winning innovation
Premises Information Plates or ePiPs. Instead of fixing physical plates to buildings to tell firefighters about the building, the Brigade used its data expertise to create its own technological – and now award winning – solution. The UPRN is linked to an Ordnance Survey product called MasterMap that stores the shape of every building. The image here shows this much more simply. The water office in LFB has information on all the hydrants and how far they are from the building – measured by hose reel lengths, amazingly. Working out the distance “is just maths: Pythagoras,” says Chris. The height of the building is known because OS has taken a radar measurement of the height of every building and this information is in a companion dataset to MasterMap. “Crews used to have to stand outside buildings and work out how tall the building was. They would count the number of floors and multiply by three because that’s a rough estimation of height. Using this system we know how tall each building is. I think that’s just awesome. “We’d like to get to a place where the system is updated dynamically – so the identification of number of floors for instance could be done on scene rather than when the crew return to station.” It is inevitable that the conversation will turn to Lakanal House and the fire that led to the tragic deaths of six people in 2009. Chris says that the ePiPs is part of the response to that, but the idea of having information plates about tall buildings has a longer history and comes originally from Scotland. The trial of physical plates on high-rise buildings in London concluded that it was a good idea, but it would be better if it were on the computer, hence the birth of ePiPs. Moore Stephens built the ePiP system for London Fire Brigade and at the moment it is unique to the Brigade. Other fire and rescue services have shown interest in the approach and with “a corporate gazetteer to make these clever connections,” Chris hopes that many others will adopt it over time. FIRE recognised London Fire Brigade’s innovation and was delighted to present Chris and the team at the Brigade with the year’s Project of the Year Award at December’s Excellence in Fire & Emergency Awards.
24 | February 2017 | www.fire–magazine.com
“We’d like to get to a place where the system is updated dynamically – so the identification of number of floors, for instance, could be done on scene rather than when the crew return to station”