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Managing incidents in the South of France
How one of Europe's largest fire brigades manages major incidents and other emergencies in the south of France...
The Bouches du Rhône department is a region of 5,100 square kilometres, located in Provence in the south of France. The region ranges from mountains (the Alpilles to the north, the Saint Baume and the Saint Victoire to the east) to plains and flat country (the Camargue), and includes the busy urban area of Marseille.
Bouches du Rhône is not only an area favoured by tourists - it is also an important industrial region with thirty-one High Risk Hazardous (SEVESO) registered sites. This part of France is also renowned for its large forest fires - major incidents that demand a strong public safety organisation.
The Bouches du Rhône Fire Brigade (SDIS: Service Departemental D'incendie et Secours des Bouches du Rhône) receives 500,000 emergency calls a year and attends 120,000 incidents, some of which involve more than 200 vehicles.
Command and control
The Brigade has a command and control centre - 'CTA/CODIS' - located in Marseille. The centre receives all emergency 112 and 18 numbers from within the department, as well as managing 1,000 professional and 4,000 volunteer firefighters, based in 66 fire stations and using 1,400 vehicles.
In an emergency the public dial 112, or historically 18 for Fire, 17 for Police or 15 for Emergency Medical Services. The 112 and the 18 emergency numbers are managed by the Brigade. In the last few years the organisation has received an increasing number of emergency calls from 112 - not only from European tourists but also increasingly from the French public, who are now using the 112 number where they used to call the 'traditional' emergency numbers.
The SDIS responds to a wide range of events including major forest fires, accidents at sea, mountain climbing accidents, industrial site events - and emergency medical services, often involving tourists. When receiving a 112 call SDIS either manages it if it relates to its own role, or transfers it to other Public Safety organisations.
Computer aided dispatch
To help it manage the organisation the SDIS has implemented an intelligent Computer Aided Dispatch system, I/CAD from Intergraph Public Safety. I/CAD uses a highly graphical, digital map-based environment that helps to speed calltaking and dispatch. More than 40 I/CAD systems have been installed in Europe.
At SDIS the system is used by 16 calltakers/dispatchers, two supervisors, two remote dispatchers at the Emergency Medical agency of Marseille, 20 remote web based positions - and 66 remote positions at fire station level.
Part of SDIS' fleet of operational vehicles is equipped with automatic vehicle location and mobile data terminals that allow them to change the status of the vehicle directly from the field.
The I/CAD system incorporates various telephony interfaces including automatic location identification and messaging using GSM mobile phones. The vector map for the entire street network, plus main building footprints and aerial photos of the region are also fully integrated into the system.
All 66 fire stations are connected to I/CAD command via ISDN and analogue radio.
Forest fire management
In order to manage large forest fires an additional module for the system - 'FireTactic' - has been developed by Intergraph Public Safety France in partnership with brigade firefighting units. It is designed to help emergency services optimise their forest firefighting capability using quick, high-performance modeling and decision making.
Based on conventional meteorological data (wind speed and direction, temperature, sun exposure, water reserves), the user can predict a fire's progress. The system provides tools to analyse situations and react in real time (visualising the fire front on land cross-sections, calculating distances, surface areas, perimeters, water requirements, etc).
"We have been using the I/CAD system since 1998", says Lieutenant-Colonel Marc Vitalbo, head of the IT department of the Bouches du Rhône Fire brigades. "The centralisation of the 112 and 18 emergency call numbers and the centralised management of vehicles and firefighters could not have been carried out without this reliable and powerful system. The solution has proved its efficiency not only in daily operations but also during crisis situations - forest fires, floods, and other major incidents".
"The implementation of the system also allowed the effective restructuring of the Fire brigade's organisation, when we brought all fire stations under a single point of command and a single administrative authority", he adds.
Lieutenant-Colonel Vitalbo explains that the system allowed SDIS to modernise its safety procedures, as well as providing a balanced response to emergencies across the region using its risk analysis and resource optimisation functions.
"The system has increased the availability of our firefighters and their equipment" Vitalbo says, "and allows us to run all operations in real time. It also improves the quality of the information provided to local authorities. And by ensuring that we assign the right type and quantity of units, based on event type and level of incident, it optimises our resources and reduces our incident handling costs".
