Interactive Operations Research

Response Pro: An Emergency Management Tool

Response Pro is a powerful web-based planning and analytics platform tailored for emergency response systems (especially fire departments). It provides an intuitive interface for interactive scenario planning, combining spatial data and real-time performance metrics to help agencies explore improvements in their response operations. By visualizing fire station locations, emergency call hotspots, and coverage areas on a map, officials can easily identify gaps and test strategies to reduce system-wide response times. The core value of Response Pro lies in its data-driven approach to planning—enabling faster, evidence-based decisions that enhance public safety and optimize resource allocation.

Data Requirements

To leverage Response Pro effectively, users should prepare a few key data inputs (common geospatial formats like Shapefile or GeoJSON are supported for map data):

• Call Data: Historical emergency call records, including details like timestamps and locations of incidents. This is used to analyze demand patterns and response performance, and can be provided as tabular data (e.g., CSV) or as geocoded points in a GIS format.

• Station Locations: The geographic coordinates of all fire stations (existing and proposed). These are typically uploaded as a point dataset (Shapefile or GeoJSON), ensuring the platform knows where resources are located across the map.

• Coverage Areas: The service boundaries or districts that define the region of responsibility for the emergency services. Users can input these as polygon files (Shapefile or GeoJSON) representing city limits or fire district boundaries, which help in analyzing coverage and pinpointing any out-of-range zones.

Descriptive Analytics

Descriptive Analytics offers a map-based visualization of the current system, including fire station locations and call density heatmaps. Users can explore historical call data trends over time (e.g., by hour of day, month, or year) to identify patterns in emergency incidents and response performance. This high-level overview helps in understanding where and when calls are concentrated, informing decisions on resource deployment and highlighting areas that may need additional coverage.
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Adding Stations

Adding Stations is a hands-on feature that lets users introduce new fire station locations or reposition existing stations directly on the interactive map. This drag-and-drop capability makes it simple for planners to experiment with station placement scenarios in real time—adding a potential station, moving one to a different neighborhood, or editing station details. Users immediately see the impact of these changes on coverage maps and response time metrics, enabling quick what-if analyses for strategic planning.

Adjust Response Time Contours

Adjust Response Time Contours allows users to define and modify travel-time coverage zones around each fire station. Planners can set custom time thresholds (for example, 2, 4, 6, and 8-minute response rings) and visualize them as contour areas on the map. These adjustable contours show how far each station can reach within a given timeframe, helping identify which areas fall inside or outside the target response times. By tweaking the contours, officials can easily spot coverage gaps or overlaps and assess how changes (like new stations or redeployed units) would improve emergency coverage.

Optimization of Station Locations

Optimization of Station Locations utilizes predictive modeling to recommend better station placements for improved coverage and efficiency. This feature analyzes data such as call hotspots, current response times, and population distribution to suggest optimal locations for new fire stations or the relocation of existing ones. It’s a powerful strategic planning tool—allowing decision-makers to evaluate data-driven scenarios where adding or moving a station could reduce overall response times and balance workloads. In short, the system helps forecast “what if” outcomes and guides fire departments toward smarter long-term station deployment.

Analytics

Interactive Analytics provides a dynamic dashboard of key performance indicators (KPIs) for both the entire emergency response system and individual stations. Users can monitor system-wide metrics like average response time, incident count, and resource utilization, while also drilling down into station-level performance dashboards to review each station’s specific stats (e.g. its own average response time, number of calls handled, etc.). The dashboard features interactive charts and filters, enabling officials to explore trends and comparisons easily. This real-time analytics view supports better oversight and data-driven decision-making by ensuring both city-wide trends and station-level performance are readily accessible at a glance.

In Collaboration with Peter Park.