Towards development of a predictive model for structure fire – a review of the literature

The principles of firefight have remained relatively unchanged throughout time, that is firefighters are on standby ready to respond as quickly as possible (Smith et al 2016). But what if Information Systems tools and technology could make a change to the way that risk is identified and resources allocated and deployed. A review of Fire Fighting literature and examination of four exemplar case studies demonstrates that analytics could provide emergency managers with a toolset that could be used to make informed decisions on future fire emergency scenarios. We propose using the SCOR supply chain management concepts and applying these to the firefighting industry combined with predictive analytics to identify at risk properties. Firefighting appliances could be pre-deployed to locations that were at higher risk of structure fire thus reducing response times, which could save life, reduce damaging and environmental impact.