Every Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Site Now Has Wireless Wi-Fi From Cisco




-/Wi-Fi Technology News/- Fire fighting is a dangerous business-so anything that improves the chances of safeguarding the lives of victims and firefighters alike is a boon. And even more so if the improvement reduces the manpower and time taken to update vital information needed by the fire brigade for its work.

A fire brigade in the United Kingdom is preparing to use a Cisco? Unified Wireless Network to upload vital map data to all of its emergency response vehicles, giving firefighters an up-to-the-hour insight of the places they are working in.

Like most brigades, the Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service relies on frequently updated map information to help fire crews respond effectively to emergencies. This information is carried in a database on each of the Service's firefighting vehicles-and there is a lot of it.

Fire crews do not just use the kind of map information you find in your local street plan. They also need detailed layouts of each floor in almost any large building that they might be called to operate in. Not knowing the location of a door or stairwell could have fatal consequences.

However, because there is so much detailed information that changes often, updating it frequently is a challenge. In the Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service, one person is assigned to the job.

Every quarter, they burn an updated copy of the data onto a CD and then load it onto each of the Service's 44 fire engines, plus 13 special appliances such as aerial ladder platforms, emergency tenders and an environmental unit.

In itself the process takes time, requiring visits to 31 fire stations. And doing it more often than once a quarter is impractical because of manpower considerations. But, using wireless, the Service's ICT projects officer believes manpower will not be an issue.

"Our strategy is to push the data out to the stations via the WAN and then each appliance will poll the revised database over the WLAN," Pete Garyga says. "If the appliance is mobilized during the process then it will ignore the update until it returns."

Automating the updates will provide fire and rescue teams with greater insight in emergency situations and improve civilian safety because new maps can be pushed out whenever there is a change to the database, rather than at quarterly intervals.

In addition, the information can be disseminated much more quickly, ensuring that each fire appliance always carries completely up-to-date information.

"It will be more timely and more efficient," says Garyga. "The infrastructure is already in place. All we need to do is add another Service Set Identifier to our WLAN and then fit additional Universal Serial Bus wireless cards to the appliances."

Using the WLAN to automatically update fire engine map data is not new, but until now all the fire brigades that have done it in the United Kingdom have used dedicated wireless networks to do so. Garyga, however, intends to use Derbyshire Fire and Rescue's existing WLAN network.

This is already providing the Service with greater flexibility, collaboration and productivity, by allowing traveling workers to access management systems more easily when visiting stations.

In 2005, the Service began looking at WLANs as a trusted technology that could be added to its infrastructure.

"The main driver behind our interest in WLAN was that we believed people in our offices would be more efficient if they could use it to work with laptops and PDAs," explains Garyga.

"When the devices were purchased, we made sure they were wireless-ready with the intention of ensuring that when a fire officer arrives at a remote station they could log in from anywhere in the building, without having to track down a spare network cable.

"People such as fire safety officers are often making calls into local stations and we envisioned that they would be able to hot-desk a bit more."

Cisco was a logical choice of provider for the wireless network technology, since the Service already used platforms such as Cisco Catalyst? 2950 and 3750 Series switches, Cisco 2600 Series Multiservice Platforms and Cisco PIX 515E Security Appliances.

"We wanted to stick with the brand we know and love," says Garyga.

Every Derbyshire Fire and Rescue site is now covered by wireless. Typically, larger fire stations have a Cisco 2006 Wireless LAN Controller and up to six Cisco Aironet 1242 Access Points.

The Service uses the wireless network to improve the productivity of its people and, using a Cisco 2710 Wireless Location Appliance, to track high-value assets such as laptops.

So far, says Garyga, the response to the Service's WLAN offering has been very positive. "Pretty much anything that can be accessed using a desktop is also available over wireless, including the Management Information System that we use for reporting on fire incidents."

Clearly, even before helping to upload map data, wireless is a hot technology at the Service.

More about Cisco Systems here: http://www.cisco.com

By Jason Deign, News@Cisco.
Jason Deign is a freelance journalist located in Barcelona, Spain.