An Activity Network Approach for the Analysis of Manning Policies in Firefighting Operations

This paper presents a semi-empirical method for the analysis of manning policies in firefighting. Since manpower costs account for a major share of non-volunteer fire departments' budgets, manning level is one of the most important policy issues relating to fire departments faced by local government decision makers. Yet, practically no analytic research of manning levels has been previously carried out. The method described in this paper uses an activity network approach to describe fireground command operations and a structured interview to obtain data. The technique was used to analyze the effect of manning level in one- and two-family residential fires in the city of Calgary, Canada. A series of structured interviews with fire department officers generated data concerning precedence relations among activities, their durations, and their manpower requirements. These were used to establish a relationship between manning levels and time needed to extinguish the fire. The analysis indicated that there is a limit on manning level above which only marginal improvement can be obtained. Also, the effect of an additional firefighter depends on the existing manning level. The results presented here are of a preliminary nature. However, they seem to lend credibility to the technique. In addition, we discuss some qualitative conclusions and other possible uses of the method.