Evaluation of a software prototype for supporting fire emergency response

Despite recent work on information systems, many first responders in the UK Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) are unable to develop sufficient understanding of the situation to enable them to make good decisions. As a partial requirement of the development of information system for the UK fire and rescue services, a software prototype consisting of a number of human computer interfaces are developed and subsequently evaluated to explore how to present useful information for firefighters during their response operations. This paper exclusively discusses the findings arising from end-user demonstration sessions conducted via participative type of prototype evaluation which is aimed to understand the appropriateness and usefulness of the proposed software prototype. This paper contributes to improve the designing of the human computer interfaces and human computer interaction for supporting fire fighters during fire emergency response.

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