Information Collection in Forest Fire Response Operations; A Foundation for Situation Awareness

The management of an emergency response, like forest fire response, requires high levels of coordination, efficient communication and effective situation awareness within the team. Critical response decisions are based on timely and effective collection and processing of large amounts of constantly changing information. This research focuses on improving the data collection process during fire response operations. Efficient and comprehensive information input and accessibility can enhance the team’s awareness about the fire situation. Through a user-centred design approach, a design that facilitates the data input process is proposed. The design consists of an office and a mobile interface, which should be used in the headquarters and by the crew leaders on the field respectively to support information input, communication and distribution. The user evaluation showed that the proposed design is effective for improving the data collection process and supporting the operators’ required situation awareness during an incident response.