An evaluation of the fire safety emergency cover toolkit

There has been a great deal of research on risk management within the context of fire and other emergencies. Most of this work focused on estimating the probability of risks and their impact quantified in terms of damage and loss by modelling fire growth and spread. However, the integration of the performance and effectiveness of prevention and protection measures used in buildings while developing integrated risk management plans (IRMPs) to allocate fire and rescue resources is still a developing area. There had been some recent efforts within the Department of Communities and Local Government (CLG), the Home Office, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister that investigated risk assessment as part of the development of a process for planning Fire Service Emergency Cover (FSEC). Part of this work resulted in the development of a FSEC toolkit to assess risk, plan response, and model the consequences of resource deployment. However, there is a need for a holistic and integrated approach that considers fire risk prevention and protection and makes use of fire related data held in the UK. This approach will help to improve FSEC and hence the IRMP process. This paper introduces fire risk management and explains the capabilities of FSEC. It then discuses the limitations of FSEC and finally, presents the further research needed to improve FSEC.