Fire Department of Dortmund

The Fire Department of the city of Dortmund (FDDO) is the sixth largest one in Germany. It is responsible for fire fighting, rescue and emergency management in an area of 281 km² with about 590.00 citizens. 750 professionals (incl. administration and management) run 9 fire stations. About 1000 volunteers organised in 19 fire brigades support the professionals. In the city of Dortmund an underground network, a road tunnel (four lanes, two tunnels, length 1.700 m) and an inner harbour (europe’s biggest canal port) are operated. Several emergency trainings and fire simulations have been organised within these buildings. Therefore the members of the Fire Department Dortmund have high-level experience and expertise that they can contribute to this project. In 2006, the city council of Dortmund established the Institut für Feuerwehr- und Rettungstechnologie (Institute for Fire Service and Rescue Technology [IFR]) as an additional sector of the fire department focusing on research activities.

IFR / FDDO has experience in scientific projects like the EU-Projects VIRTUALFIRES, NiFTI, PRONTO, SHARE, INCA as well as the national funded Projects AirShield, SAFeR, GÜTER, Mobis Pro, GenoPlan, LAGE, EVA and Anchors. The environment of FDDO offers qualified testbeds.

The close contact to other German and European Fire Departments /organizations is a good basis for system design and validation purposes. Within EmerGent, the FDDO/IFR supports the definition of end-user requirements and usability as well as the organisation of expert workshops. For dissemination purposes, the FDDO/IFR will distribute project results to other fire and rescue departments and related organizations. FDDO will provide the rescue and fire fighting management skills and the necessary infrastructure for carrying out the tests e. g logistic support, and personnel.

Role in the project

Beside the support in a multitude of tasks, FDDO is especially responsible for the Task 3.6, i.e. Analysis of potentials using social media for EMS in the EMC. Within this task FDDO will focus on:

  • Analysis of potentials for an embedment of social media in regard to an improvement of EMS work practices (based on qualitative empirical studies).
  • Analysis of work practices of different EMS and comparison with regard to the integration of social media in each organisation.
  • Qualitative empirical research with participating EMS with focus on emerging forms of communication, it‘s potentials and it‘s possible integration in the work practice of EMS.
  • Identification of potentials of use cases for the applications of social media and answering questions about how information could be provided by EMS through social media and how information in social networks could be captured by EMS in an appropriated way.
  • Report how the working practice could be improved by using social media.

Contact

Dr.-Ing. Hauke Speth, hspeth@stadtdo.de

WWW: www.ifr.dortmund.de