Fire Operations System with In-Vehicle Fire Response Mapping

The City of Winston-Salem Wins Global Bangemann Challenge

On June 9, 1999, the King of Sweden announced the recipients of the prestigious Global Bangemann Challenge award for information technology projects that support citizens and communities. The City of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was named the winner in the category of Traffic and Transport. The Global Bangemann Challenge is an international award competition sponsored by the City of Stockholm, Sweden.

The City of Winston-Salem won for its Integrated Network Fire Operations (I.N.F.O.) system, which is designed to reduce the time it takes for firefighters to respond to emergency (911) calls and to provide digital information about the address of an incident to aid fire officers make better informed decisions.

I.N.F.O. uses the City's computer-aided dispatch system to transmit the addresses of fires and other incidents to computers running Windows 95 onboard its fire trucks and emergency response vehicles. The mapping component of the system incorporates two Esri software packages--MapObjects and NetEngine--a combination that allows I.N.F.O. to generate and display a possible route from the current location of the vehicle to the location of the incident-taking into account street segments that are closed for any reason. I.N.F.O. also displays any prefire and HazMat planning information that might be available (e.g., building floor plans, access points, hazardous waste information, or presence of physically challenged occupants).

Esri's NetEngine is a programmer's library designed for network modeling, pathfinding, and tracing of network topology.

For further information about the I.N.F.O. project, contact Lis Welcker, Esri project manager for Public Safety and Disaster Services, at 909-793-2853, ext. 1-2102.

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