A new report issued by the London Fire Brigade has confirmed that the Brigade is reaching incidents more quickly since they introduced a new 999 mobilising system – VISION DS – provided by Capita Secure Solutions and Services.
London Fire Brigade’s report, ‘Fire Facts’, states that the average attendance time for both the first and the second fire engine to get to an incident in 2018 is 19 seconds faster than in 2015.
Supporting the concept of dynamic mobilising, Capita’s VISION DS uses the very latest technology to guide control room operators to mobilise fire engines to emergencies according to their proximity to incidents. The statistics issued in the ‘Fire Facts’ report show the improvement in response times since the Brigade implemented Capita’s VISION system in 2015.
In 2018, the average attendance time for the first fire engine to get to an incident in the capital was 5 minutes 14 seconds whilst the average attendance time for a second fire engine to reach the scene for the same period is 6 minutes 33 seconds. These average attendance times fall well within the target times of 6 minutes for the first fire engine, and 8 minutes for the second fire engine to arrive.
Assistant Commissioner for Brigade Control and Mobilising, Jonathan Smith said: “We’re committed to getting to all emergencies as quickly as possible and our new mobilising system is helping us to locate the nearest fire engines so we can help those in need faster. The technological advances we’ve made since the 999 system was set up in 1937 is vast but the improvements are also down to our fantastic staff. The Brigade’s control centre took over 179,000 calls last year and without their tireless dedication, calmness and unflappable resolve the fire engines would never make it out of the door.”
What makes VISION DS different?
Capita’s VISION DS technology provides operators with a concise recommendation of the most appropriate resources to despatch to an incident. The system uses a routing algorithm which analyses current resource utilisation and the nature of the incident, taking into account vehicle location (AVLS) and journey times. This is displayed via a visually appealing dashboard including mapping, histograms with arrival timings, and crucial information about the appliance status, the officer in charge and more, all provided via automation technology as soon as an address is entered.
Because the system can tell whether those appliances are in a home station or out on the road, VISION also supports deployment with more efficient communications by calculating the best way to get the message to the crew, for example whether the alert goes off at the station or is displayed on the mobile data terminal of an appliance already on the road.
