A remarkable map of London, made entirely from London Fire Brigade data on fire engine callouts, has been created by a lecturer from University College London.
The map shows each of the 144,000 fire engine callouts in London in 2011 with different coloured lines for false alarms, fires, and “other callouts”. By far the biggest number of callouts are false alarms from automatic fire alarms.
The overall picture, with all of the data points emanating from the 113 fire stations in the capital, creates a surprisingly accurate map of London. The data used was originally requested by the Financial Times, which was keen to map the possible impact of proposed fire station closures in London.
That analysis from the FT showed that central London boroughs — where the majority of the closures are proposed — enjoy “quicker response times” than outer boroughs.
Click on the image to see it more closely.
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This is really good piece of work put together for education and decision making processes. Will this data be used effectively?
Rob areally remarkable piece of work. I think the total callouts and their drawing shows a remarkable feature that there is not particular area having more number of calls. False alarms due to automatic alarms is understandable but human made false calls is a big factor in our region. I think masses are to be educated on the subject that what a dalse call can cause in case of actual ebmergency could not be attended in time.
Rob in our region we are also having a service just to look after emergencies and they are really good. A data they revealed that out of total thousands of calls more than 50% were fake calls and once they reached on site they were astonished to find the actual incident. They were calling for education of masses and I think they were absolutely right.
One of the coolest things about this map is the detail that you can see, if you know London well. For instance, the middle right of the image clearly shows the Thames getting gradually wider, snaking it’s way out of London. And in between Richmond and Kingston stations you can clearly see the space where Richmond Park is — obviously there’s less fires there. The same goes for North London where you can see the space that is Hampstead Heath between Finchley and Kentish Town. Really amazing.
The hub and spoke feel of the map alone should be useful to see how station locations are used and provide some data when it comes to where to spend budget money. One thing I wonder is if this map would be useful for city planning of streets and road repair since they can see the most traveled paths used by emergency vehicles.
@Mike Clauss Good thinking Sir, especially for road repairs and traffic improvements.
Mm, interesting point there, safensane. I think if you could remove certain fire stations to see how the same stations responded to incidents equidistant from 2 or three of them were able to respond you’d get a better idea of road conditions, too.
Do you mean authorities would be called to an incident as a prank and that prank would then turn out to be a real incident?
Truly a nice bit of mapping, BUT…..Surely every callout is real until arriving on scene to discover it’s a false alarm, for a truer picture some correlation must be drawn between the number of ‘real’ fires notified by automatic alarms against that of the false alarms, enlargement of the map does show that the quantity of malicious false alarm calls (which one would consider would include callouts to bogus incidents in the columns marked in red as well as yellow) is well below a quarter of that for ‘Good intent’ false alarms.The overlaying of all the incidents does tend to… Read more »
Absolutely, you’re right. I wouldn’t have thought that a visualisation like this would be used to rationalise the specifics of which (if any) fire stations should be closed. Incidentally, the consultation on the future of London’s fire services closes on Monday.
Gbrown you are right but I feel that it will also help in minimizing the traffic disturbance from the roads being heavily used by the emergency vehicles. Isnt it.
@Shehrbano Kamran You are right if it will be used appropriately
I think these call outs are really important and there availability at larger scale will benifit the whole of the community as a whole. I think the precedence of these call outs are a great idea and can easily be immpleneted at all places without discremination.
I think the closure of Fire departments from the area based on these graphs are not the right thing to do. You can guess the quantum of happening and there location but you cannot predict the venue for next incident. I think these departments are located after much working and just eliminating or dismantling it is not justified.
I think that would be really interesting to see. I doubt that they could cut back on a number of firemen or trucks but consolidating stations looks like a possibility based on the map. I’m sure that the stations were placed there in the past because they fit geographically but as population density of an area changes looking at things like average response and travel time.
You’re right in pointing out that this visualization is only possible after the callouts have been responded to. It provides a helpful overview on the areas that might need more frequent assistance. Like you said, at the time of the fire callout, responders don’t know if it’s a false alarm or not–and to delay response at the possibility of a false alarm is out of the question.
Consolidating stations definitely sounds like a good idea. It sounds like a smarter way to use limited resources (ie. trucks, space, equipment, even human resources.) Of course, studies have to conducted but the data from callouts can definitely be used in the process.
Agreed this isn’t something you rush into after seeing one map of call outs. I do think that the map could be valuable in for laying out a new map of where stations should be located and how funds are allocated.
@Robert Brown, thanks for the post. London Fire Brigade has an excellent job of creating this map of london made from fire callouts. I am curious to know what actions was taken to the callers who made false alarms with malicious intent.
I do think that the map could be valuable in for laying out a new map of where stations should be located and how funds are allocated.
@Mike Clauss, I totally agree with you. I think this graph covers shows data point for year 2011. We need such data point for multiple years so that we can compare what improvements are happening and according to that we can do future planning.
Like you said, at the time of the fire callout, responders don’t know if it’s a false alarm or not–and to delay response at the possibility of a false alarm is out of the question.
@Hazel Chua, I agree with you. I think responders should take every call seriously rather than worry if its false alarm or not. If its s false alarm call with malicious intent then they should take strict action on the callers to that such incidents dont happen in future.
I think masses are to be educated on the subject that what a dalse call can cause in case of actual ebmergency could not be attended in time.
@Shehrbano Kamran, I totally agree with you. I think we should use the power of social media to educate the masses about the false alarm calls. If we can reduce the false alarm percentage then it would definitely help the department to improve service efficiency.
Sunita I was thinking theses maps are a great help in determining the nature of incidence and its frequency and what community is efffected the most. I think with this data we can easily point out the reasons of the incidences and can educate the masses in better way.
I think with this data we can easily point out the reasons of the incidences and can educate the masses in better way.
@Shehrbano Kamran, I totally agree with you. But if we have multi year data then we can compare what progress we are making in making the services more efficient.
Sunita agreed but I think even one year data will serve the purpose of making the service better then previous year and then this cycle may continue. But in no way reducing the number of fire departments will serve the pirpose the best we can do is relocate with taking guidance from these call outs.
I could not agree more, for me as a visual person this way not only a good solution to educate public but also could be a great learning preductability tool… pointing area need it attention