L1: Oral Presentation C Thursday, 3:30 – 4:00 pm C French River Room

Fire/EMS Incident Management with GIS

Rick Larkin
City of Burnsville Fire Department
100 Civic Center Parkway
Burnsville, MN  55337
rick.larkin@ci.burnsville.mn.us

Catherine Hansen
Rowekamp Associates, Inc.
1601 East Highway 13 Suite 201
Burnsville, MN  55337

The city of Burnsville’s Fire Department needed a cost-effective way to manage and display current and historic fire incidents, track incident trends, create deployment strategies based on actual calls for service and obtain information for decision making. They decided to incorporate their RMS fire incident data with ArcView GIS to accomplish their mapping needs. 

The city chose to go with a software solution specifically geared for fire/EMS incident query, mapping, and reporting. This software is called FireView, and is developed by The Omega Group out of San Diego, CA. Burnsville manages operations within their ArcView® GIS environment. FireView enables Burnsville staff to analyze incident data, perform station location analysis, determine response zones, and create maps, charts, and reports for their fire/EMS incident data. Rowekamp Associates, Inc. customized their software to automatically download RMS fire incidents, geocode (place a point) each incident on a base map, create default reports, and generate customized queries based on Burnsville’s specific reporting needs.

This presentation will address the Fire Department’s mapping and spatial data management needs, the obstacles in overcoming these needs, and the solutions GIS provides them.