Information on the move: mobile data systems in the emergency services

The emergency services increasingly have speedy access to information needed to save lives. But more could be done, particularly in the area of sharing information. Tom Wilson and colleagues look at how the profession can help.

The mobile phone is a ubiquitous tool. The 'personal digital assistant' or PDA has become almost as common (for example, in accompanying parcels to your door) and, in some cases, the two devices have merged—witness the Treo series from PalmOne or the XDA from O2. Many refer to these as 'convergence devices'. Particularly noteworthy is the Blackberry, for email on the move, which has become almost a cult object and status symbol in some organisations. For more complex functions than keeping in touch or checking one's diary or contacts list, the laptop, or tablet computer, is the tool of choice.

Increasingly, these tools are being used by the emergency services around the world—in police forces, fire services and ambulance services. We have been investigating and evaluating the use of various devices in these three services over the past three years, mostly at the request of the services themselves, who have sought outside, academically-sound help in evaluating pilot studies and experimental implementations. The following scenarios are examples of what we have in mind.

Emergency scenarios

A police patrol car, fitted with an automatic number plate recognition system, is following a vehicle, whose driver and passenger are behaving suspiciously. The police switch on the system, a video-recording is taken of the number plate and information is extracted, online, from the police national computer and compared with the number plate. A match is made and the screen informs the two officers in the car that the vehicle ahead of them was stolen the night before, 300 miles away, following an armed robbery. The officers radio for assistance and, eventually, three other police cars (located automatically by their vehicle-positioning system, and crewed by officers with appropriate skills and training) converge on the suspect vehicle and bring it to a halt. The occupants are arrested and stolen goods are found.

An ambulance is called to an address where an elderly person is believed to have had a heart attack. It carries not only a couple of paramedics and resuscitation equipment, but also the technology to keep in touch with base. The paramedics find that the patient is conscious, but in pain, so they carry him into the ambulance after establishing his identity and current medication. In the ambulance, the patient's condition is monitored on the in-vehicle ECG machine which sends the information directly to the local coronary care unit (CCU). The paramedics also send information on his age, general condition and medication. In return, the CCU advises and authorises the paramedics to use 'clot-busting' drugs (which have to be prescribed by a qualified cardiologist and so otherwise would be unavailable to the crew), which enable faster treatment in the hospital and, in many cases, can save lives en route.

A fire appliance is called out to a fire on an industrial estate. Initially, the crew have no idea of the nature of the fire, its scale, or its exact location, since the passer-by who reported the incident doesn't know the area. On route to the fire, additional information is radioed to the crew from the control room, as further information comes in from other people at the scene. Once the fire site is reached, the officer in charge is able to identify the building and to search the database on his laptop, which contains details of all industrial properties in the area. He establishes, from the database, the location of water supplies and drainage systems and, from the floor plan of the building, is able to warn officers of the location of potentially dangerous equipment such as gas cylinders used in welding operations. However, some chemicals have already burst their containers and the hazards are unknown, so the officer radios to the control room to seek further advice. He is able to provide information about markings on the vessels used for the chemicals and the control room contacts the local offices of the Health and Safety Executive for information—a member of HSE staff drives to the scene to advise in person.

We can see from these brief scenarios that not all information is delivered, or available, in real time: a mix of technologies is employed. However, police forces, fire services and ambulance services throughout the UK—and beyond—are carrying out pilot studies and developing systems to move towards the ideal of delivering all necessary information to their crews wherever they may be and, equally, enabling information to be captured from those crews as it is acquired in the course of incidents.

Critical factors

Our work with emergency services leads us to some conclusions.

• First, there is a rather bewildering mix of technologies available, and the pace of change is so rapid as to inhibit implementation—no one knows whether the next device or technology to be announced is going to make obsolete what was the latest system six months ago.
• Second, wisely, as a result of the first point, the various services are adopting pilot studies and phased implementation of systems, so that if mistakes of any kind are made, they affect only the pilot and not the rest of the service.
• Third, many of the problems that surface have nothing to do with the technology or its implementation. Rather, they are human problems of uncertainty about employers' motive; loss of middle-management power as operatives are given the necessary information to make decisions on the spot; training needs; and 'technophobia'.
• Fourth, organisations are realising that adopting a new technology is not simply a matter of installing equipment: it is likely to induce organisational change, and that change needs to be managed.

Finally, increasingly, the exchange of intelligence and information among all three services discussed here is becoming critical. We can imagine, for example, that the fire described above, might also involve the police in seeking out the arsonist, as well as the ambulance service in treating a nightwatchman who has suffered a heart attack in his efforts to respond to the incident. At present, the systems do not exist that would enable the three services to co-ordinate their response. Although there are some national information systems, individual police, fire and ambulance services have a bewildering array of different legacy systems which provide much of the key information. This makes information provision a different proposition in each organisation and often renders, for example, police officers operating in one area 'blind' to much of the local intelligence when they cross into an area policed by another force.

What is the implication of these new developments for the information professions? It is clear that the acquisition of external information to support these activities fills a very minor role. Most of the information transmitted and received relates to the specific operations, drawn from organisational databases or from documentary resources or the personal knowledge of those in the control room or in the vehicles involved. However, these facts point to major roles for information professionals.

First is determining the information requirements of personnel carrying out emergency operations, often in situations of considerable stress, where rapid decision making is needed. Second, the trials have raised concerns about the limited value of handheld devices because of the poor quality and limited size of user interfaces. The design of system interfaces for easy operation in vehicles is critical and will require much experimentation before satisfactory solutions are found. The key is that 'solutions', rather than a single solution, must be found: decision support interfaces require different principles from online learning interfaces; smart-phones are different from in-car tablets; and open access information can be presented differently from restricted information.

Third, the effective design of databases, to store the necessary information and ensure its rapid retrieval, will be necessary. Fourth, the integration of information resources from different parts of the organisation, often developed for purposes other than those for which they are now needed, must be undertaken. Allied to this, the pilots have revealed to organisations the need to validate and cleanse data, if it is to be used effectively and with validity.

Finally, systems across the different emergency services need to be integrated—in fact, even within a single service, the different forces need to interchange information when, for example, criminals cross the boundaries of police forces or when ambulances from several services are called to a major incident. That integration does not exist at present, and will be required for building effective national emergency information services.

The trials referred to in this paper have been undertaken by the AIMTech Research Group, Leeds University Business School, directed by David Allen. This paper was prepared by Tom Wilson (Professor and Co-Director of the group) with the participation of Dr Allen, Alistair Norman and Charles Knight.

How to cite this paper

Wilson, T.D. (2005) Information on the move: mobile data systems in the emergency services.   Update, November, 40-41

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