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Westmeath Fire Authority chooses Trimble Juno GPS with FastMap software for vital fire hydrant survey
The Irish Fire Authority has swapped old paper based data collection methods for a new Trimble Juno GPS data capture system to increase the quality and accuracy of the information it gathers and stores on the county’s fire hydrants.
Within Westmeath there are two fire authorities, Westmeath Fire Authority (operating three brigades; Mullingar, Castlepollard and Kilbeggan), and Athlone Fire Authority operating a single brigade in Athlone itself. The two Fire Authorities respond to around 1,300 calls per year in the county, attending various incidents including chimney fires, house fires and road traffic incidents.
As part of a Pre-Fire Plan, Joe Cassidy, Assistant Chief Fire Officer at Westmeath and Paul McLoughlin, Full-time Station Officer in Mullingar,t are responsible for recording and maintaining the county’s fire hydrant data. Joe Cassidy explains, “As part of our Pre-Fire Plan we are currently identifying the location of all hydrants in the county with a view to creating a database of information for each hydrant with critical data such as type, flow, and water pressure – all vital information for our action plan. Previously we were capturing these details on a paper hard copy but this limited the amount of descriptive information we could record and made working on wet and windy days extremely difficult.
'We were already aware of the benefits that GPS could bring to our survey but were initially disappointed at the performance of an early system we trialled that delivered location only and was not user friendly. We therefore decided to contact KOREC, Trimble’s UK and Irish distributor of Mapping Systems, and following a consultation selected a Trimble Juno.”
The Trimble Juno, a cost-effective GPS enabled Pocket PC, consistently delivers Westmeath and Athlone Fire Authorities a real-time accuracy of up to 2m which is more than adequate for locating the hydrants. This was backed up by a clear 3.5 inch display screen and an extended battery life of 6 hours.
Westmeath and Athlone Fire Authorities also selected FastMap Mobile data collection software to run on-board their Juno. This enabled them to record a wide range of attribute information and use pre-defined fields with auto-entry and pick lists to eliminate missed information and typos.
Once all the data has been collected and downloaded to the designated computer in Fire Authority HQ, the whole council will then be able to access the populated map and view the number and recorded information for each hydrant. This will make it possible for the Water Services to check hydrant conditions and clean them out as required.
Joe concludes that the main benefit for Westmeath and Athlone Fire Authorities is having a live GPS feed with mapping and pre-gathered hydrant information in a single, user friendly unit. “Access to this sort of information, live in the field, enables us to form an effective plan faster than previously. Additionally the ability to quickly locate a hydrant at an incident, and then in the scenario where we have several hydrants close by, be able to access information on each one regarding pressure and water flow, is invaluable in an emergency situation.”
