How to improve the handling of rescue calls within the Alpes-Maritimes rescue service

partly illustrated with the example of the Antibes casern?

Antibes Casern

The student linked the IS problem to the core processes

of the organization and discusses the role of people
regarding processes/tech

2020-2021
Introduction :
The SDIS 06 is a huge fire department; it represents 4 064 firefighters and 239 medical staff as nurses and
doctors backed by 1 107 vehicles in order to be able to rescue more than 1 million people. All these firefighters
are distributed in 76 caserns which includes 9 main caserns (classification which assume that this type of
casern can equip a fire vehicle, a rescue one and a diverse one simultaneously) as the one of Antibes. All this
organization generates many flows and especially informational one and that’s why it will be very interesting
to work on it. I decided to focus my study on the Antibes Casern to have a better view on what could be done
on a city scale and replicated on a larger scale. This casern is a principal one, armed by 23 firefighters in
summer and 19 the rest of the year, it can also intervene in the nearby cities such as Cagnes, Vallauris, Biot,
Cannes or out of the department for massive intervention (flood or forest fire for example). In 2019, the casern
did 8 649 interventions which represents a huge amount of flows. The city population is about 200 000 people
in summer and 80 000 the rest of the year.

The IS system of the whole SDIS is relatively new, it was set up ten years ago. What has recently changed is
the organization of the alert management : before 2011, each casern received directely calls from claimings
and since that date it is all centralized in an alert processing center, which is situated in Cagnes for the whole
department. Another major change, which follows the first one, is the development of new radios which
enables a better and more efficient monitoring of the means used by the operators. In fact, thanks to the Artemis
software, the operator can see where the teams are and where they were on their missions since 2012. Before
that software, firefighters had to call the operator to inform him, as when they leave the casern, now they just
have to press the “1” or another number referring to related information on the radio. Novelty that year, the
rescue vehicles are equipped of a tablet to see the itinerary and in particular to directly deliver their medical
check-up at the hospital where as it was done in writing before.

On the component of that information system, the information technology is all that enables to deal with the
emergency which includes cellular phones, the call processing center, the software Artemis. Actors who make
up this system are the victims, the callers, the operators and the firefighters.

This is not a commercial organization, its goal is not to make profit. Its goal is to ensure the health security of
people and goods. That’s why we cannot speak of consumers but more of users for that type of service. And
it must be quickly reachable by the maximum amount of people if they need to because otherwise all the tools
are useless.
The process is below:

Notification

Does not happen every time

It is important to mention that the intervention can be cancelled (for many reasons : error from the operator,
the person is actually safe, etc) while firefighters are going to it but this just stops the process and the claiming
can recontact the operator to know when the firefighters will arrive and another flow that doesn’t appear is
when the firefighters ask the operator a precision on the intervention.

The structure is quite hierarchical with a very functional and transversal division of labour (in the sense that
each firefighter can go in any vehicule). The lines of communication are very vertical and there is a real culture
of reward, whether it is oral or via a rank passenger. The values are approximately the same as in the army:
courage, dedication, obedience and there is a certain culture of not showing weakness, a form of toxic
masculinity. And one component of that which is interesting for our study is that firefighters are mostly
reluctant to changes especially when it involves technology: they have the feeling that technology can betray
with a dysfunction at a crucial time.
Problems about IS in the SDIS related to the handling of rescue calls
I had the opportunity to have an interview with the Commander Marc Barontini, who is in the organization
for more than 40 years and is now chief of the operational service room. The problems that the SDIS faced
are the following:

• Human resources management of the operators receiving the alert: there is about 120 operators,
volunteers or professionals, that are registered but it is sometimes difficult to make bearing and that
tire the one working out
• The fact that some places in the department are not well covered and so the phone or radio doesn’t
work
• The SDIS isn’t enough prepared when we speak about major interventions such as a forest fire, flood
or even a traffic accident on the highway, that is a point that can be improved on many aspect

I had seen other issues as the overload of the service during when there is many more population but he told
me that wasn’t an issue anymore and the waiting time wasn’t above some minutes. I thought that the service
was polluted by too many calls that didn’t need rescue or assistance and this is not the case because call jokes
have disappeared, thanks to the telephone box closing and the phone tracing. However, there is still people
calling that don’t really need to be assisted or rescued such as an old people calling to switch off its television.

Furthermore, some subject can be improved on an IS basis as the identification of the intervention, and so my
study will also be about that. I think, for example, about:

• Lack of communication between the firefighters and the operator which gives situation where the
firefighters lose time to find the right adress
• Difficulties to find the right place where the firefighter have to go to, due to some errors from the
calling persons, some places that are really difficult to find (similar names in the city) or a
misunderstanding of the operator (which is related to the one above)
The solutions on those types of problems related to the IS infrastructure of the SDIS 06

Human Resources management

On human resources management, many things were already done to enhance and facilitate the work of people
that are dealing with that. The last major change on that point is LGTP (“Logiciel de Gestion du Travail et du
Personnel) where every agent can have a synthesis on how many hours they work and how they are distributed,
the managers can also see which agent has done more work and if they need rest and how many hours they
could still do regarding the law. This is a point that need to be well treated because firefighters, and moreover
people working during night or with non-conventional pace are more likely to develop Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder. In fact, there is the study from sleep researchers published in May 2019, entitled Associations
between sleep disturbances, mental health outcomes and burnout in firefighters which explains that. And
information system could really improve that management. In fact, as the chapter about Relationship between
Innovation Diffusion and Human Resource Information System (of the International Journal of Information,
Business and Management, vol.5) said, IS applied for HR can have a huge impact on the motivation and the
good organization of a structure. And the IS is important on the role of returns here, the actual software LGTP
doesn’t take in account the non-formal view of working management. My recommendation on that point is to
implement individual survey for the alert processing center employees every semester that ask them how they
feel about their formation, roles in the process and if there have faced recently big changes in their life. Survey
would be informatically analysed and reviewed by a manager if an issue is found. This would be very efficient
to understand the problem of workload repartition, even more when we know that approximately half of the
operators are volunteers and so have a job on the side, and to know how to manage it. This solution would not
be too expensive to set up, the only problem would be to be sure that the employees fill in the survey and
managers must be formed and informed on that new tool to ensure its proper use.

Phone network coverage

For the phone network coverage, this only happens in some restricted areas in mountains for example, so it
does not concern Antibes. Mister Barrontini gave the solution: to develop the network on that areas. However,
that is the state load to do that and the reason why it is not already done is because it is very expensive. As
these areas are mostly remote and only used for fun as for skiing or rock-climbing. The Fire Department could
invest in an application to know who is in that area and to inform users on the dangers and the attitude to
adopt. The user should just inform that he will be in that area during a period of time and after that period a
text message is sent to him to know he is okay and if everybody is all right. As this could also create some
more solicitation by inattention, the user will be required to give 2 numbers of near relation as the fire
department could be sure that something unexpected happen. This could really improve the handling of rescue
call and moreover the rescue management when we know that for 2018, 36 persons have died (Lyon Capitale)
in mountain partly due to a lack of knowledge. To go more deeply in my analysis, this type of use could be
legislated as for the seat belt because it is a tool that could save many lives per year. I am not for legiferate
everything but if it could be efficient to save lives. The study Knowledge and attitude toward road traffic
regulations among students of Health Sciences College in Taif Region reveals that the use of the seat belt had
increased after the legislation, here is an example of a safety legislation that had an impact on life saving.

Major Interventions
In the major interventions, there are still some issues but I am convinced that the Fire department,
unfortunately with the last events, has made huge progress on how to deal and manage catastrophes such as
natural disasters, huge car traffic incidents or attacks. In that type of intervention, the issues are multiple, first
of all there is the fact the alert center can be overwhelmed.

I think it's important to point out that a lot has been done recently to improve the handling of rescue efforts,
particularly in the case of attacks. Nevertheless, problems remain. We are talking about large-scale
interventions such as forest fires, fires in general, road accidents, attacks or interventions requiring special
attention from the fire department. There is, firstly, the fact that the alert processing center can quickly be
overwhelmed by the number of calls for the same intervention, which puts at risk the rest of the callers who
also need help and rapid response. Furthermore, there is also the fact that the IS is not sufficiently at the service
of positioning, counting the number and identification of victims or persons in a given disaster area. This is
more of a point for improvement than a real problem, but better ergonomics of the IS system could free up a
number of operating forces that are looking for victims to start fewer secondary missions and thus have more
efficient rescue operations.

On the first problem, it is simply a flow, the operating method used by the alert processing center is as follows:
it manages the calls one by one by creating a queue, this requires precious attention for the operators. One of
the solutions could be to create a direct announcement with a request from the caller such as: "Hello, you are
on 112, an operator will answer you, if your call concerns the forest fire at XXX/ road accident on lane XXX/
attack at XXX then you can hang up, our teams are up to date, thank you". This could be very effective in
generating less traffic on the platform, especially with a clear enough report it would not miss another
emerging fire next to it, although this rarely happens. This should not cost too much for the SDIS knowing
that these customization effects are already possible, although it takes time to implement them at some point.
It would be a simple improvement on this point.

Concerning the identification of people in a given geographical area, this requires a considerable effort on the
part of the rescue workers who have arrived on the spot. One of the possible solutions would be to send SMS
messages to a given geographical area, as Frédéric Couffignal, head of Internet and new technologies projects
at MAIF, explains in an interview for an essay on Geolocalisation and geosecurity, insurance companies have
already been using these technologies for about ten years. It would thus be possible to send a text message to
a disaster zone asking if people need assistance and if they are in a safe place. Phones could also be used to
geolocate people at the scene. Such a technology would represent a significant investment to be put in place
but would save a lot of money on manpower for this type of disaster, especially since it is likely to intensify,
according to IPCC forecasts.

Lack of communication between agents and problems to find the right place
On the two problems concerning the lack of communication
that give rise to a poor response for the rescue, this is mostly
due to an error on the address or a wrong information
transmitted by the applicant. To counter this I think that two
solutions can be set up jointly, first of all direct emergency
call terminals could be set up as it is already done on the
beaches of Antibes. Indeed on public places frequented this Example of an emergency call terminals on the Antibes
beaches
could be useful as Antibes is a city which has lots of big
public places, so the firemen would have a precise point to intervene directly because often on large squares,
stadiums or shopping malls it is also difficult to find way around easily. This could nevertheless create some
inconvenience such as false calls but with a video surveillance system, this could be negligible for the
operators. This solution is still expensive to implement. A new solution could be to go through the phones of
the applicants. Indeed, once the firefighters do not find the address, the operator could send a message to the
applicant with a link to know his precise address. His geographical position could then be transmitted to the
firefighters' tablet to find out exactly where he is. This could be an efficient and cheaper solution.

Conclusion
As researchers Ling and Yttri said already in 2002 (taken from the work of von Pape T, in 2007 in Diffusion
et appropriation du téléphone portable par les adolescents), our society is becoming more and more
individualistic and telephones have made it possible to bridge this trend. During these years, more than to
organize themselves, telephones have become an identity for a generation and today even more for an entire
society, so that those who don't have one are seen as marginalized. I thus sought to base the answers to the
problems encountered by the alert processing center on this and the possibilities that this object brings us,
particularly in terms of geolocation. It is a central tool in the management of alerts, but it could still be better
exploited. What I take away from this research work is that the processing of alerts within the SDIS 06 is
rather well managed and they do not hesitate to put the means (hence a few solutions that are a bit costly on
my part sometimes) but as we are dealing with a subject of an urgent nature and potential lives are at stake,
an improvement is always beneficial and good to take on the slight problems that remain. Note that the
difficulty with this type of structure is that one must always be prepared for the worst-case scenario in order
to be effective.
Word count : 2 751

Reference list
Activity annual report 2019, SDIS 06, https://www.sdis06.fr/jcms/dsdis_6722/les-rapports-d-activites-
annuels

Etat d’avancement du nouveau système informatique opérationnel partagé ; June 7 of 2011 ; SDIS 06 ;
https://www.sdis06.fr/jcms/psdis_12529/siop-etat-d-8217-avancement-du-nouveau-systeme-informatique-
operationnel-partage

Haute-Savoie : mortalité inquiétante en montagne cet été ; August 9 of 2018 ; Manon Botticelli ;
https://www.lyoncapitale.fr/actualite/haute-savoie-mortalite-inquietante-en-montagne-cet-ete/

Associations between sleep disturbances, mental health outcomes and burnout in firefighters, and the
mediating role of sleep during overnight work: A cross-sectional study ; December 28 of 2019 ; Alexander P
Wolkow, Laura K Barger, Conor S O'Brien, Jason P Sullivan, Salim Qadri, Steven W Lockley, Charles A
Czeisler, Shantha M W Rajaratnam ; Journal of Sleep Research, Volume 28, Issue 6 ;
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/jsr.12869

Relationship between Innovation Diffusion and Human Resource Information System, February of 2013 ;
International Journal of Information, Business and Management volume 5;

Knowledge and attitude toward road traffic regulations among students of Health Sciences College in Taif
Region, KSA; November 10 of 2014; Ali Hassan Al-Zahrani ; research article by the Department of
Community Health, Faculty of Medicine and Applied Sciences, Taif University

Géolocalisation et géosécurisation: enjeux et perspectives. Entretien avec Frédéric Couffignal ; March 2010 ;
Anne Marchais-Roubelat and Fabrice Roubelat ; article for FLUX, internationation scientific notebooks
Networks and territories ; https://www.cairn.info/revue-flux1-2010-3-page-79.htm?try_download=1