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Are we ready for urban disaster mangement? Application of GIS in fire service management –A case study in Kolkata

Matter of Concern for management
A close look in the analysis of data in the Central Business District of Kolkata was really of concern. In some of the wards which are the activity centers, has net carriage way available for most of the roads which does not allow the fire Vehicle to go in. It is noticed in spite of Fire Incident located by the side of the river Ganga , it becomes difficult for the engine to reach there due to non availability of the carriage way. It might be necessary for changing or modifying the designs of some of the fire fighting equipment as per the need of the local situation. A close monitoring with the Traffic and Transport department will also required to be established in the High Risk Zones to keep the road free from parking.

What Next?
The need of the immediate future will be to train up a group of Fire service officials in handling and operation of the generated system and put the system in use for their daily use. This will enable the department to support the system by themselves and generate confidence to tackle the situation more effectively as the required information will be available with them readily. As the system will require a regular update of above information already stored in the soft ware, a trained group with the minimum requirement is required to take the initiated work further.

The present work will be completed by March’ 2002 and handed over to the fire Service department. At present different types of thematic maps are being prepared and will be supplied to different Fire Stations as a record of information.

A complete change in the present system will also have to be conceived where the entire service will be TIME oriented, i.e. any fire incident will have to be reached within specific time say, 3-4 minutes from the nearest fire station and the entire future model has to be designed accordingly. Therefore the Question :” Are we ready for Urban Disaster Management ? If not How long should we wait ?”

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