Potentials - January/February 2015 - 37

service response. This includes not
only on the fire ground or at emergency events but also pre- and postevent (e.g., prevention, education,
preplanning, investigation, etc.).
One convenient baseline that defines in detail the numerous job performance requirements of fire fighting
are the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) professional qualification standards. Specifically, a series
of 19 detailed NFPA standards address fire fighter job functions and
disciplines, such as fire officer, fire
inspector, fire investigator, and so on.
The entire series of professional qualification standards for different types
of fire fighters, according to NFPA professional qualification standards, are
summarized in Fig. 2. This exemplifies the types of qualified and certified
fire fighters that exist today. This also
provides an outline of the primary
recognized tasks performed by fire
fighters, which typically require special operational skills, training, and
other job-oriented features.
The aforementioned family of standards symbolize the breadth of different activities handled by the modern
fire fighter. As with many professions,
additional important definitions are
used to address other critical matters such as contractual employment
obligations, statistical tabulation, and
benefit distributions. For example,
the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938,
along with further clarification from
Public Law 106-151 (passed by U.S.
Congress in December 1999), defines
for compensation purposes "employees
engaged in fire protection activities."
Specifically, an employee in fire protection activities is "an employee, including a firefighter, paramedic, emergency medical technician, rescue worker,
ambulance personnel, or hazardous
materials worker, who: 1) is trained in
fire suppression, has the legal authority and responsibility to engage in fire
suppression, and is employed by a fire
department of a municipality, county,
fire district, or state and 2) is engaged
in the prevention, control, and extinguishment of fires or response to emergency situations where life, property,
or the environment is at risk."

the vision of smart fire fighting
To better understand fire fighting,
consider the magnitude of the fire
problem. In 2012, fire departments
in the United States responded to
more than 480,000 structure fires,
which resulted in approximately
2,470 civilian fatalities, 14,700 injuries, and property losses of approximately US$10 billion dollars. More
than 31,000 fire fighters were
injured on the fire ground. These
losses can be significantly reduced
by exploiting new opportunities in
technology development through the
fusion of emerging sensor and computing technologies with building
control systems, firefighting equipment, and apparatus. The resulting
CPSs will revolutionize firefighting by
collecting data globally, processing
the information centrally, and distributing the results locally.
Smart fire response would be the
result of the integration of smart fire
apparatus, fire-smart buildings, and
smart fire fighter equipment. Whereas the technologies for many of these
components exist, their effective integration is lacking. Situational awareness for the fire fighter and incident
commander is critical and would
form the basis of smart fire-fighting
equipment, transmitting information
about fire environment, the status of
fire fighter and equipment, and fire
fighter location to the fire fighter and
incident commander.
This will be achieved by enhancing the power of information through
enhanced data gathering, processing, and targeted communications.
An evolving range of databases and
sensor networks will be tapped to
create, store, exchange, analyze, and
integrate information into critical
knowledge for the purpose of smart
fire fighting. Engineering, developing, and deploying these systems
will require new measurement tools
and standards among other technology developments.
In addition, the incident commander would be able to communicate and transmit information to
the fire fighter. Smart fire apparatus would employ sensing and com-

munications technology that, when
combined with a smart fire-fighting
operating system, would enhance
the safety and effectiveness of the
modern fire fighter. A fire smart
building would aggregate sensor
and performance data from various
building systems including HVAC,
elevator, security, fire alarm, sprinkler, and occupancy/energy management systems to enable capabilities to visualize the present severity
of the incident, forecast future conditions (e.g., significant hazards such
as pending collapse or flashover
conditions), and monitor and track
emergency responders within and
around a structure.
This effort to address smart fire
fighting also intends to include others who support the role of fire fighters in achieving their specific mission within the emergency response
infrastructure. For example, it is
intended to include call processing
centers, whether or not they are directly associated with a recognized
fire department. Similarly, primary
and secondary emergency receivers
(e.g., hospitals, medical examiners,
environmental cleanup, salvage,
and insurance), general public and
building occupants, and governmental administration are likewise
included since they relate to the mission of the fire service to accomplish
their intended duties.
The vision of smart fire fighting
includes all applicable topic areas of
the fire protection engineering and
fire service emergency responder
communities. That vision also addresses all phases of fire resilience
(i.e., pre-incident, during an incident, and post-incident). From the
perspective of available data sensors
and data analytics, nothing is excluded. The following are examples
of key sector areas involving smart
fire fighting:
■■Fire-fighting personal protective
equipment (PPE) and electronic
safety equipment (ESE) and
equipment-All equipment and
gear on board and directly
attached to an individual when
operational.

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