Riverside County Fire IT designs, develops, maintains and supports
all of the computer systems and networks within CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire. With over 100
remote facilities and 600 users, Fire IT provides support to every fire station, administrative
center, air base, camp, Emergency Operations Center and planning section as well as the Emergency
Command Center, Alternate ECC’s and 3 mobile communications units within Riverside County’s area of
responsibility. These systems and networks provide a platform for a wide variety of
applications used by the department to carry out its emergency response and management mission,
such as; Computer Aided Dispatching (CAD), station dispatch printers, Operational Staffing System,
GIS systems and applications and Email system.
Fire IT’s most recent accomplishment include the deployment of two
major systems to improve the response times of first responders to emergencies.
In the summer of 2005, the department completed a rollout of its
station printer project. This project involve d placing a compact, receipt style thermal
printer at each fire station. These printers activate and print out detailed incident
information for the first responders, whenever a dispatch is made from the emergency command
center. These devices also serve as a secondary means of notification for field personnel,
increasing the Department’s redundancy and reliance on a single system. This system has
reduced the response time of personnel responding to emergencies, as well as helped to reduced
radio traffic.
In February of 2007, Fire IT released the first
production stage of the Department’s mobile computing platform (MDC). The MDC consists of a
rugged laptop computer mounted in fire response vehicles. These computers are equipped with
GPS and multiple software packages to assist fire personnel in locating emergencies, planning
initial attacks and performing routine inspections. They are also equipped with Automatic
Vehicle Locator (AVL), sending their location to a central database and allowing each vehicle to
view the location of other department fire response vehicles that are AVL
enabled. Additionally, when a station is dispatched the information is sent from CAD to the
MDC, and the MDC uses software application provided by Geospatial Technologies Inc. (GST Mapper®)
to provide a suggested route to the location of the
incident. This provides a tertiary means of notification for redundancy, as well
as being able to instantly suggest the quickest route to the emergency based on speed limits and
distance. The MDC is also a valuable wildland firefighting tool, allowing incident commanders
to instantly obtain accurate information day or night. This system has reduced the response
time of personnel responding to emergencies, and provided incident commanders with real-time
resource allocation information on a multitude of incidents. The Department currently has over
200 MDCs deployed in its fleet.
Riverside County Fire IT designs, develops, maintains and supports
all of the computer systems and networks within CAL FIRE/Riverside County Fire. With over 100
remote facilities and 600 users, Fire IT provides support to every fire station, administrative
center, air base, camp, Emergency Operations Center and planning section as well as the Emergency
Command Center, Alternate ECC’s and 3 mobile communications units within Riverside County’s area of
responsibility. These systems and networks provide a platform for a wide variety of
applications used by the department to carry out its emergency response and management mission,
such as; Computer Aided Dispatching (CAD), station dispatch printers, Operational Staffing System,
GIS systems and applications and Email system.
incident. This provides a tertiary means of notification for redundancy, as well
as being able to instantly suggest the quickest route to the emergency based on speed limits and
distance. The MDC is also a valuable wildland firefighting tool, allowing incident commanders
to instantly obtain accurate information day or night. This system has reduced the response
time of personnel responding to emergencies, and provided incident commanders with real-time
resource allocation information on a multitude of incidents. The Department currently has over
200 MDCs deployed in its fleet.