Fire service innovation As we have said, the nature of fighting
fires will be impacted by technology. We have talked about the impact of drones, 5G communications, augmented reality and others on the activity of firefighting. We believe also that non firefighting activities could, in fact must, be significantly affected by 21st century technologies and attitudes – and attitudes are arguably a more important factor than technology.
Qualities for success
There are any number of characteristics that we believe will be crucial to future success. These aren’t comprehensive, nor are they in any order of precedence, but in our view they demonstrate how the role of the firefighter is changing and will continue to change. Many organisations, public and private, have already embraced some of these to a greater or lesser extent – which means that FRSs have some catching up to do.
Focused on users Increasingly, public services are embracing a way of designing and operating services that places more emphasis on rejecting ‘traditional’ ways of doing things, focusing instead on meeting user needs from the users’ perspective. So, how can a historically hierarchical FRS organisation do this?
Clearly, leaving a burning building is not necessarily the time to start researching user needs, but an even greater shift towards prevention and community resilience will mean finding new ways to better understand communities and to share that insight across public services. Perhaps nothing captures this better than
the role of FRSs in preventing harm through achieving behavioural change in communities. We believe that a far deeper and richer understanding of communities is both possible and necessary. The retail industry for example is able to identify customer preferences, habits and even values from the data it has available. We think this will become an increasingly important capability for FRSs, in association with partners.
Relentlessly curious The pace of change is such that curiosity – which is the route to understanding – is becoming more important than knowledge currently held and quickly superseded. Thus, organisations need to find ways to constantly test assumptions and ‘current’ knowledge - and be able to share that new knowledge quickly and efficiently. FRSs have become excellent at adaptation,
which enables them to respond to changes in the environment and react to events. What if this could be scaled up to cover all aspects
FOCUS
www.frmjournal.com APRIL 2020
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