Improvements and Future Development

The application of geographic information to fire business has greatly improved the operations but its effect was most significant in enhancing the speed and efficiency of fire services by its 119 caller locating function and automatic acquisition of regional information. The situation prior to the establishment of the Fire Geographic Information System clearly explains its impact.

4.1 Past of 119 Emergency Rescue System

○ Inability to gather location information swiftly

In order to acquire information about a disaster i.e. its location, fire dispatcher had to have a long conversation with the excited 119 caller, and this made it impossible to provide fire services to callers who could not communicated.

○ Waste of fire troops

The mischievous 119 calls by children and adults led to unnecessary dispatch of fire fighters, and bring a decrease of available fire fighters in case of an emergency.

Furthermore, this became a cause of considerable stress to the fire fighters.

○ Unscientific fire service and difficulty in information provision

Fire dispatcher have to plan fire troops by referring to data on geographical position of the disaster and status of fire fighting equipment in possession by the fire forces and a table of organization, and then give the order of dispatch. However unscientific process method rely on fire dispatcher's past experience had many problems such as slowly dispatch. Also, disaster location that was delivered to fire troops were transmitted in voice signals through the fire UHF wireless network, but due to network failures (interruption, cut offs, busy signals due to limited call routes) produced repetitive messages and weighted fire dispatcher with a load of work.

○ Deficiency of regional information and sharing a related office's information Information necessary in fire operations such as the amount of water available and information on buildings, underground facilities and nearby hospitals were difficult to acquire and even if there were such data, it had to be searched for manually and taken a lot of time. Also, disaster such as gas explosion require cooperation with related offices (city gas, KGS etc.) but the only way to request their help exchanged a message by using wire lines, and simultaneous dispatch was difficult.

4.2 Improvements

○ Integrated disaster management system in the entire city of Daegu

The 119 emergency call registration and management of disasters operated by fire stations unified into fire headquarter and more systemized. This brought about a slim down of staffs and a cut down on the budget.

○ Minimization of the waste of fire troops

The results of the statistics of the number of 119 calls and mischievous phone calls are as in <Table 2>. Comparing the rate of mischievous calls in 1998 before the system was built and 2003 after the system was built, a remarkable decrease(about 70%) has been recorded and is still on the decline <Figure 3>. This means that through the system, the needless dispatch of fire forces has been minimized and the overall number of calls have also gradually decreased(27%), lightening the work load of fire dispatcher and troops.

Fire Emergency Rescue Service Based on GIS 157

Table 2. Number of 119 calls & mischievous calls

Category Total calls Mischievous calls Rate(%)

Pre 1998 777,061 577,905 83.9

1999 766,040 643,042 74.4

Post

2000 642,232 238,293 37.1

2001 654,587 218,893 33.4

2002 581,513 108,730 18.7

2003 553,882 76,849 13.9

Figure 3. Trend of number of 119 calls & mischievous calls 0

100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,000 600,000 700,000 800,000 Cases

1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 Year

Number of 119 Calls & Mischiev ous Calls

Total calls

Mischiev ous calls

○ Maximization of Fire Services

By providing disaster information utilizing the spatial information of the Geographic Information System to fire dispatcher who had to rely on their past experience to locate the disaster or plan a dispatch, the call registration time and the response time has greatly shortened, enhancing the initial responsive capacity of fire fighters. According to fire statistics, prior to the system, it normally took 2 to 5 minutes for fire dispatcher to locate the disaster based on the descriptions provided by the caller, but after the system, the caller's telephone number and location is indicated automatically(about 3 seconds) and took only about 40 seconds for the personnel to find the disaster location. In particular, the location information immensely contributed the fire services to 119 emergency callers

who were not able to communicate.

The system also automatically planned out the most appropriate fire troops by location spatial search and a table of fire organization, and the dispatch paper with map of disaster area and information can help fire troops to response rapidly. The fire statistics report that in case of a fire, it took an average of 7 minutes(nationwide) from the time of 119 call registration to the time the fire troops arrived at the disaster site, but with the system, that time was shortened to 4 to 5 minutes.

4.3. Future Developments

The utilization of spatial information in disaster management has not only brought about great improvements, it is also enhancing the quality of fire service to our people.

However, due to the fact that different organizations manage spatial information, it is in fact, difficult to establish a system that allows everyone to share up-to-date information swiftly. To resolve this problem, the central government should consider managing spatial information in relation to disaster. FGIS has taken this possibility into consideration and has connected the Daegu City Gas(pipelines, situation information) and KMA, and this year is striving to connect with the Emergency Medical Information Center(1339) for acquisition of hospital information.

Based on the recent rapid progress in computers and telecommunication technology, the system that was focused on preparation and response and recovery will be converted into prevention focused such as the disaster forecast and prediction simulation system easily.

This prevents any possible disasters and even in the case of occurrence; it will swiftly response it in the initial stage. In particular, if the satellite video imagery is provided real-time, it will not only be possible to perceive a disaster but also an effective control by real-time monitoring about on-site. Related technology such as ubiquitous and telematics are the foundations upon which an on-site response information system can be established so that the Fire Command & Control Center can acquire real-time disaster information(moving picture and situation of on-site, facility of related fire activities etc.)

Therefore, the continued improvement of FGIS will lead to a high-tech three-dimensional disaster prevention system and with a swifter and more systemized management of prevention, preparation, response and recovery, advanced fire services will be available to our people.