GIS in Public Safety Applications Focusing on Wildfires in Estonia @BEUC2018

Andres Mumma, Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, EE

Large scale wildfires happen in Estonia occasionally, so it was in 1992, 1997, 2006-2008 and also this summer. The consequences of wildfires are priceless damage and very longtaking recoveryphase for the nature, also operational costs can exceed 30000 €/day and the availability of fire/rescue resources decreses to not acceptable level especially in densely populated urban areas. In 2006 during large wildfires GPS devices, computer maps and mapping applications such as “ozi Explorer” were introduced to the fire/rescue services and it increased vastly our situational awareness in the geographical context so we started to understand where our resources were and where the fire was. 10 years have passed since the last large wildfire in Estonia and there are much more GIS tools available nowadays compared to the time 10 years ago like drone imagery, satellite imagery, more flexible and shareable mapping applications, personal geopositioning applications and much more…and much of them are free and connectable to the GIS system which can be created by the users themselves. This presentation is about how Estonian fire/rescue services have benefited and can benefit in the future from abovementioned off-the-shelf GIS systems and also which are the pro’s and con’s of these systems compared to specifically tailored and highly secured narrow audience GIS systems in Estonian fire/rescue industry which are mandatory to use at the moment.