Engineering mobility for international fire brigades
Firefighters face crises on a daily basis, with lives-their own and the public’s-in the balance with every run they make. And as with all government services, they are faced with static or shrinking budgets with which to perform their missions. Mobile and cloud computing offer the efficiencies fire brigades need to do their jobs on tight budgets, but there traditionally has been little IT training for firefighters and little operational experience with IT by the brigades.
Microsoft and its partners have collaborated to develop a rugged, easy-to-use, mission-specific tablet for German fire brigades, preloaded with a suite of applications to put communications and access to a wide range of data into the hands of firefighters in the field. Initially developed for German-speaking users, Microsoft is working to expand the reach of the tablet, which will be showcased at an international firefighting conference in Germany in June. Some of the apps already are multi-lingual and can be easily translated to most European languages.
Because of the lack of IT training for most users, as well as the difficult conditions in which it will be used, ruggedness and ease of use were primary considerations in developing the mission tablet. It also features specialized applications that provide detailed specifications for automobiles to help with rescues, information on hazardous materials, mapping of hydrants, tracking of personnel and equipment, and monitoring exposure to harmful materials.
The market for the tablets is large, although fragmented. In Germany alone there are more than 100 cities with populations of at least 100 thousand people, and volunteer fire brigades in communities of every size have more than one million volunteers – in addition to enterprise and airport brigades. Utilizing familiar Microsoft tools to enable greater efficiency for firefighters on the job, rugged tablets can help protect their safety and the safety of the public while helping departments, municipalities and organizations stretch their increasingly tight budgets and improve productivity.
Integrating the tablets into Microsoft’s CityNext initiative, a vehicle to create safer cities through collaboration between governments and industry partners, will help to deliver the services that citizens expect in a mobile-first, cloud-first world while driving sustainable economic development.
