Quantifying The Negative: The True Value of the Fire Service
One of our greatest challenges in public safety is articulating our value in a quantifiable manner. This challenge is prevalent in most homeland security domains because our primary value is to prevent or mitigate events. However, in order to put a value on prevented and mitigated events, agencies must measure what didn’t happen. A standard strategy of public safety agencies is to measure and report events that did happen and the associated losses. However, simply measuring losses demonstrates the magnitude of the event more that it illuminates the effectiveness of the agencies tasked to prevent or mitigate it. The Fire Service must change the narrative by measuring, quantifying, and reporting the value of saves opposed to losses in a standard format. This study will start with on one type of event, structure fires, in order to keep the framework manageable, but expandable to other events with the alteration of the network theory.
Through the use of network theory and economic impact theory, the total amount of the tangible (the value of the building) and intangible (the value of the business) values of structures at risk can be quantified and normalized, resulting in a total value saved and performance measurement (S Ratio) from 0% to 100%. The S Ratio can be used as a comparative performance measurement, allowing a department to compare performance from year to year, correlating the score to staffing levels, call volume, response times or environmental factors. If regional participation is achieved, the score can be used to compare one department to another.
The following is an example of one case study:
Case Study 1
Case Study 1 is a fire that started in a common area of multiplex commercial building with five separate businesses in the building. The common area functioned as hallway that connected the businesses to a shared bathroom, therefore it had a direct connection to each business. The fire was stopped in the common area by SFD’s response model.
Incident map
The incident map shows an aerial view of the building with each node labeled and identified.
Network Model
The network model is modeled to a height of one from the contagious nodes, consisting of six total nodes, one contagious, and five links leading out from the contagion.
Quantification
The following figure shows tangible and intangible values of each node on the network model.
ΣTV Total Tangible value = $2,083,195
ΣITV (Total Intangible Value) = $7,681,979
ΣV (Total Value) = $9,765,174
TL (Tangible Loss from Fire) = $70,000
ITL (Intangible loss) = $187,791
ΣL (Total loss) = $257,791
ΣS (Saved) = $9,507,382
SR (Save Ratio) = 97%
Results
Case Study 1 shows a total saved value of over nine million dollars in one incident, with an “Save ratio” of 97%, meaning that of all the value modeled on the network map, 97% was prevented from burning.
Eric Saylors teaches courses on this topic for Elite Command Training
And can be followed on Twitter at @saylorssays
