Improving the Deployment of New York City Fire Companies

Abstract

How many fire companies does New York City need and where should they be located? Given a fire alarm of unknown severity, how many companies should be dispatched to it? These two questions are fundamental issues in the deployment of the City's fire-fighting resources. Since 1968, the New York City Fire Department and The New York City-Rand Institute have carried out a joint project to improve the delivery of Fire Department services in the face of skyrocketing demand. In November 1972, two historical deployment changes were implemented: (a) six of the 375 fire companies in the City were disbanded and seven other companies were permanently relocated; and (b) in high fire incidence areas of the City, an adaptive response policy was implemented. Under adaptive response, fewer companies are initially dispatched to potentially less serious alarms. This is in contrast to the traditional dispatching policy where the same number of companies are dispatched to each alarm. The joint Fire Department-Rand Institute project and the analyses which led to these and other improvements and the wide range of mathematical models used are described. The changes have resulted in savings to the Fire Department of over $5 million per year, a reduction in the workload of fire companies and a more equitable distribution of fire companies throughout the City.

A Survey of Operations Research Models and Applications in Homeland Security

“…A wealth of literature concerns the security of trucks transporting hazardous materials, largely such issues as routing them to avoid exposing populations Candalino et al (2004), Leone and Liu (2003), Virta et al (2003) Barnett (2004), Gilliam (1979), Jacobson et al (2000Jacobson et al ( , 2001Jacobson et al ( , 2003Jacobson et al ( , 2005, Jacobson (1996, 1997) Port and rail Glickman and Rosenfield (1984), Harrald et al (2004), Lewis et al (2003) Truck Batta and Chiu (1986, Berman et al (2000), Wallace (1994, 2005), Ingolfsson (2000, 2005), Erkut and Verter (1998), Giannikos (1998), Gopalan et al (1990), Jin et al (1996), Kara et al (2003), Karkazis and Boffey (1995), Lindner-Dutton et al (1991), List and Turnquist (1998), Raj and Pritchard (2000), van Steen (1987), Zografos and Androutsopoulos (2004) Critical infrastructure protection Emergency preparedness and response Early work Carter and Ignall (1970), Carter and Rolph (1974), Chaiken and Dormont (1978a, b), Chelst (1988Chelst ( , 1990, Green (1984), Green and Kolesar (1989), Kolesar et al (1975), Ignall et al ...…”

“…Much of the OR work on managing emergency services originated with the New York City-Rand Institute. Its work with the New York City Fire Department included a simulation model of firefighting operations (Carter and Ignall 1970); queuing models of fire company availability ; the "square root law" for the location of fire companies based on response distance, with a response time-distance function to predict response time (developed by Blum 1973 andapplied by Rider 1976); an empirical Bayes approach to alarm forecasting (Carter and Rolph 1974); a stochastically-based integer linear programming model and a heuristic algorithm for fire company relocation (Kolesar and Walker 1974); a set covering approach for locating two types of ladder fire trucks (Walker 1974); heuristics for identifying high-priority alarm boxes (Ignall et al 1975); Markovian decision models of initial dispatch of fire companies (Ignall et al 1982, Swersey 1982; and a book pulling together the accumulated work on fire deployment analysis (Walker et al 1979) under support from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).…”

OM Forum—Some Lessons on Operations Management Model Implementation Drawn from the RAND Fire Project

“…One of its tactical models is still used on a daily basis, and two of its strategic models have been used by the Bloomberg administration as recently as May 2011. Although the long-run fiscal impact is hard to measure, in 1975 the department estimated annual savings at $5 million per year (Ignall et al 1975). Recent suggestions for fire house closings, which are analyzed by FDNY using RAND models, were estimated to have a $55 million impact (Lemire 2011).…”

“…3 2. The introduction of "part-time fire companies" on duty only during peak demand hours in those regions of the city with the highest alarm rates (Ignall et al 1975). Traditionally, fire companies were on duty 24 hours a day, even though alarms peaked dramatically in the evenings.…”

Uma contribuição para avaliar o desempenho de sistemas de transporte emergencial de saúde

“…Atividades como polícia, bombeiros e transporte por ambulância vêm sendo foco de vários grupos de pesquisadores, desde o início dos anos 70 (CHAIKEN & LARSON, 1972). Países como Estados Unidos, Canadá e França foram pioneiros nos estudos, produzindo melhorias significativas no nível de serviço oferecido à população da cidade de Nova Iorque, em serviços como patrulhamento policial (LARSON, 1972) e estratégias de decisão em situações de emergência do corpo de bombeiros (INGALL et al, 1975).…”