Saratoga County Advisory Board Rip and Run Presentation

  Wednesday, September 30th 2009

I gave a presentation to the Saratoga County Fire Advisory Board regarding all the work we have done in the GFD extending the dispatching capabilities of our volunteer responders.

This is commonly referred to as the "Rip and Run" system, but perhaps, and more importantly, it should be referred to as an "extension" to the county "Rip and Run" system - as all of my work has been focused on extending its capabilities. I commonly refer to all this work as the "Rip and Run" system collectively, just because its easier to do.

Essentially I gave a very brief overview of the various efforts we've been doing here in the GFD: text messaging, voice-dialing, email and AIM instant messages - which have all been highlighted here before. But what was "revealed" for the first time during this presentation was the next step of this effort - and that is the "Rip and Run Display" initiative.

Currently in Saratoga County, there is no ability to add any automated GIS capabilities to our dispatching protocols. Many large municipal departments (FDNY, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc.) have these types of systems - because they can afford them due to their large budgets. In Saratoga County however, our volunteer departments do not have the ability to spend that kind of money to purchase these types of systems.

Fortunately, there are free tools which provide acceptable (i.e. accurate) GIS capabilities - and if you have the skillset and capabilities - its really just a matter of putting them together to create a new product - one that we can use to enhance our dispatching.

Essentially, in developing the "Rip and Run Display", I wanted to provide the following four capabilities:

1. provide GIS capabilities: map and illustrate the exact location of the given emergency on a map and computer display. The obvious advantages of this are that you can easily identify where the incident location actually is. And if you think about this some more, you can easily identify just how significant this can be - for example, while I may know where a given road is, I do not necessarily know where the "123" address is located on that road. This could mean the difference between turning right or left at an intersection, a mistake that can cost precious minutes during an emergency.
2. provide driving directions: all departments participate in the County Mutual Aid plan, so its not unheard of that a northern Saratoga department gets called for help to a southern Saratoga department - or vice versa (this is particularly true during the bad weather season like during ice storms, etc.) I'll be the first one to admit that I couldn't begin to tell you where a given road was 6 districts south of me (and 20 miles away). Having the ability to print driving directions to a given address provides a significant advantage for mutual-aid calls.
3. provide pictures of destination (a.k.a. "street view"): its not hard to imagine the advantage to a responder that we are looking for a yellow house with green shutters rather than "123 Lincoln Blvd"
4. provide hydrant mapping capabilities: using a standard GPS unit (<$100) I was able to acquire the latitude and longitude for the majority (I am admitedly missing a few) of the fire hydrants in the GFD. Naturally, having a map with the specific locations of hydrants when you are responding to a fire provides a significant advantage when fighting a fire.

Here is a screen shot of the "Rip and Run Display" in action:

In the screenshot above (and you click to see a larger version), you will note a few interesting features of the system:

1. First and foremost, all the data from the county is readily displayed - things like the county run number, dispatcher notes, the call type and location.
2. There is also a call history listing (located on the left) so that a firefighter can query the system to see the last calls. The idea here is that if there was a previous call at the given location, you could possibly pull up information from the last time you were there - which could indeed be relevant.
3. The hydrant functionality is displayed in this screenshot, you'll not the "push pin" icons displayed around the various buildings in the "satellite" view.

But this just the beta version of the system, which is naturally due to change in the future, and I hope to begin field-testing by the end of the year. One final note, I am also experiementing with alternate layouts of the screen - based on available resolutions of the given monitor. You'll note that the current screenshot is in more of a square (traditional) monitor resolution - but "widescreen" monitors are becoming more and more prevelent, and so the layout of the display should take advantage of the extra monitor real-estate.

The ultimate goal of this project is to provide a "computer display" in each firehouse and ambulance company throughout the county. With current computer technology, the use of "touch screens" is becoming the norm, and this makes keyboards and mice (for the most part) unnecessary.

So a properly designed computer system with a touch-screen can be very intuitive, even for those who ordinarily wouldn't consider themselves "computer literate".

For example, a button on a screeen labeled "print directions" is both pretty self-explanatory and easy to use. And these computers are becoming very cheap - in fact, Dell has a variety of these types of computers starting at just $700.

So what has traditionally been out of reach for "rural volunteer fire departments" simply because of the cost ($$$) factor, has now become cheap and available - which was a very strong point I tried to focus on during my presentation.

You can download and view the presentation here:

1. Saratoga County Advisory Board Presentation (09-28-2009) (.ppsx 4.3Mb)
2. Optional (if you don't have PowerPoint): Microsoft Office Powerpoint Viewer

Eventually, I have a (hopefully relatively soon) goal to get up a "rip and run" section on this site - to more specifically go over the particulars of how my software works and it's design.

I am now actively investigating the potential to get this system installed at the county level - so that all fire and ems agencies in the county can benefit from the work that we have been pioneering in the GFD. More on this as details become available...

Any questions, just let me know.

posted by spackmann in Rip and Run Development at 10:45 PM (342 day(s) old)  Permalink