Local government decision makers often alter fire department resources faster than fire service leaders can evaluate the potential impact. These decisions can leave a community without sufficient resources to respond to emergency calls safely, efficiently, and effectively. The Fire Community Assessment/Response Evaluation System (FireCARES) provides fire departments the ability to add a technical basis to what has historically been an anecdotal discussion regarding community hazards and risks as well as the impact of changes to fire department resource levels. FireCARES is an open source tool available on Github

To accomplish this task, FireCARES provides three scores for each community based on the available data: the Community Risk Score (fire and EMS), the Fire Department Performance Score, and the Safe Grade. These scores are generated from exploiting an expansive, multi-layered data set combining fire incidents, outcomes and community risk characteristics.

FireCARES also provides additional features for each of the 27k+ departments in the US. Here is an example of department level response polygons at 0-4 min, 4-6 min, and 6-8 min:

For More Information:

Website: FireCARES
Code Base: FireCARES Github
Parent Organization: I-PSDI FireCARES