A quiet revolution

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A quiet revolution T

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FIRE Correspondent Catherine Levin reports on Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service’s digital Transformation 2020, a development that could have a huge impact on firefighter response for decades to come

“Our ambition is to enable our incident commanders to see through buildings and know where their crews are.”

T2020 Programme GM Steve McLinden is the T2020 Programme lead and is hugely enthusiastic about the GovTech approach. He says:

GovTech awarded £1.25m to fund this challenge.

Organisations were asked to apply for a share of the fund for ‘an instantly deployable solution’ to the problem of

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here’s something rather special going on in Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service (MAWW). It is leading a quiet revolution and it could end up having a huge impact on the way that firefighters operate in the decades to come.

As part of a service-wide digital transformation effort called Transformation 2020 (T2020), MAWW became the first fire and rescue service to secure funding from the government under its GovTech Catalyst challenge process.

This £20m fund announced by the Chancellor in November 2017 helps public sector bodies take advantage of new and emerging technology to solve policy problems.

For MAWW, the problem was how to accurately monitor and track firefighters’ locations in structures in real time.

This is not unique to them but what they have done is find a funding route to help work it through.

With support from the GovTech Catalyst, Mid and West Wales is now seeking partners to take existing technologies and see how they can be used to solve this problem.

He explains that the challenge has four parts: 1. How can we enable instantly deployable real-time tracking of firefighters within buildings and their proximity to prevailing hazards at previously unknown locations?

2. How can we deploy mobile technology to allow the tracking of firefighters which can instantly create a ‘digital network’ to share information at all incident locations?

3. How can we provide a software solution which enables seamless data collation, access and sharing across emergency responders and partner agencies?

4. How can we present a real-time 3D map of operational environments, using virtual and augmented reality technologies, to enhance operational safety and postincident review?

“Part of that transformation is about rethinking PPE and breaking down one of the fire shibboleths that say PPE must be issued on an individual basis” 60 | January 2019 | www.fire–magazine.com

Fire & Emergency Resilience

“The work going on in Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service is impressive and forward thinking”

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artificial intelligence and machine learning to predict events that might call on fire resources. That might include existing fire data, weather, social media chatter and so on.

Allied with their existing work on implementing tracking (using RFID technology) devices on all equipment including PPE, the model can also include where the assets are and inform where they should be in response to predicted risk. This is interesting work and has great potential to be deployed in other fire and rescue services.

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real-time tracking of firefighters at incidents. It is unlikely that a single company will be able to resolve this challenge, so organisations were encouraged to collaborate and apply as partnerships.

The challenge is broken down into phases, with the first phase involving the award of research and development contracts to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the proposed solution. For the public sector, this is uncharacteristically quick with phase one projects having to start by February 15 and complete within three months.

The two projects that look workable will then move into the second phase for prototype development and testing.

To generate interest, Steve McLinden has spoken at various events. He found the level of response to the challenge extremely positive with many UK, EU and global technology companies and academic institutions expressing an interest in developing or reimagining existing technology to deliver a workable solution. The challenge has also led to wider discussions with other fire and rescue services in the UK and internationally who are keen to resolve this issue.

The application process closed on November 21 and at the time of writing the results was not available.

The GovTech challenge is part of a larger effort by MAWW to work with partners to resolve other issues common to all fire and rescue services such as predicting demand on resources.

With £30k from the Spark Challenge run by the innovation charity NESTA, MAWW is now working with Cardiff University to build a predictive model using

Better Use of Technology The Transformation 2020 project came out of MAWW’s service review where they decided to ‘introduce improvement to the service through a better use of technology and, notably, an integrated software system which will facilitate the efficient collection, collation and dissemination of information’.

Some of that local improvement is being facilitated through an investment in the FireWatch product from Infographics. MAWW is seeking to strip back the business processes of the service and rebuild them to be more efficient and take advantage of technology to deliver a better experience for staff. Steve talks about ‘transformation by consent’, which has the feel of something collaborative and achievable about it.

Part of that transformation is about rethinking PPE and breaking down one of the fire shibboleths that say PPE must be issued on an individual basis. Well on the digital fire station, all kit is available and known and the right size is available – in theory anyway.

Shared Learning The work going on in MAWW is impressive and forward thinking. Their ability to seek out funding sources and successfully apply for them is one that other services can learn from. They have tapped into the work of the Government Digital Service where there is a vast amount of activity going on to transform public services. Digital Leaders (www.digileaders.com) is another useful resource to explore and find out what innovation is going on in other parts of the public sector and they have already hosted an event to share MAWW’s challenge with a wider audience.

The key point here, of course, is to make sure that the learning from MAWW is shared and that the outputs are repeatable and scalable to other fire and rescue services.

The National Fire Chiefs Council is in a good position to assist this sharing as its Digital Programme has already started its early work locating the digital disruptors and bringing them together based on common interests. Who knows, perhaps one day there will be an NFCC digital dating app to ease the process? www.fire–magazine.com | January 2019 | 61