Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service has begun using
mobile computing to improve the collection of fire risk information
from households, following a successful pilot.
To meet the government's Home Fire Risk Assessment initiative,
households in the region were until recently filling in a two-page
questionnaire on fire risks, the contents of which were then
re-keyed into a SQL database by the firefighters themselves.
Firefighters are now collecting information from householders on
personal digital assistants running Windows Mobile 5.0, enabling
the data collected to be uploaded from fire stations onto the SQL
database.
The system has been built using mForms from Integral Mobile Data
and is being rolled out across Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne,
North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland to meet the
government's fire risk targets.
"The modern fire service is as much about prevention as
firefighting," said Andy Robinson, GIS development officer for Tyne
and Wear Fire and Rescue Service.
Integral's mForms allows programmers and non-programmers to
develop forms-based applications for a wide variety of mobile
platforms. The forms are designed to update almost any
database.
"The application had to be easy for our firefighters to use with
a minimum of technical training," said Robinson.
Which mobile operating system fits?
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