Modeling Response Time To Structure Fires

It is important to reduce fire department response times to incidents to improve communities' general safety, to make the allocation of emergency resources more efficient, and to improve situational awareness. In this article, we identify which factors affect turnout times and travel times for the Arlington County Fire Department in Virginia by applying both linear and spatial models to the U.S. National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS) data. The uniformity of NFIRS data makes this article's methodological innovations applicable to other participating fire departments in the United States and advances the effort to incorporate scientific evidence into government-level policy-making.