911! Get Help Faster

Reported November 2009

DECATUR, Ga. (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- If you needed help in an emergency, how fast would fire and rescue crews get to you? There is no national standard for emergency response times. Depending on where you live, city or country, it could be minutes, or much longer. Now researchers are looking at new ways to put first responders closer to where they're needed.

In an emergency, time is critical. Fire captain Eric Jackson says just getting there can be a challenge. "We have lights and sirens and horns and all that and a lot of times that still doesn't do the trick,“ Jackson told Ivanhoe.

Getting there fast can be a matter of life and death. "Literally every second counts,“ Jackson said. "We know that they're hoping that we get there right away. We know that what is a four or five or six minute response time to us is an eternity to them."

Researchers at Cornell University are working on a computerized approach to emergency response, designed to help put crews where they're needed most.

"We were looking for the needle in the haystack -- that sort of magical combination of sites that insures that response times are small,“ Shane Henderson, Ph.D., an operations research engineer at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y., told Ivanhoe.

The system uses GPS tracking and statistical studies of call histories to identify call hotspots hour by hour, so fire and rescue units can be staged at the best possible location during every shift.

"What we're hoping to do is do develop techniques to develop these organizations to use science and the mathematical tools that we're using to make these deployment decisions,“ Dr. Henderson explained.

It's science to help emergency crews get where they're needed, when every second counts.

Statistical studies and population projections are already used to decide where to put new fire stations. Researchers hope the real-time deployment software could help departments take those plans to the next level. The software is already used in parts of Europe and Australia.

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Shane G. Henderson
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14850
(607) 255-9126
http://www.orie.cornell.edu
sgh9@cornell.edu

Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Barry List
(443) 757-3560
http://www.informs.org
barry.list@informs.org

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