‘Batch mobilising’ is the term used when an operational resource is mobilised to several lower-priority incidents that have been grouped together based on their geographic location or incident type. These incidents are likely to have been queued in the first instance.
Operational resources that can be mobilised to batches of incidents may include:
- Operational fire officers
- Fire appliances
- Specialist resources, such as rescue boats
Batch mobilising is effective because it reduces the number of operational resources committed to incidents and the time and distance spent travelling. For example, a single operational resource may be mobilised to assess a batch of lower-priority flooding incidents in the same area.
Batch mobilising needs to be carefully managed for it to be successful. The appointment of suitably trained personnel to focus on and support the co-ordination of batch mobilising in conjunction with the fire control commander may be an effective method.
Technology to help batch mobilising
Many mobilising systems allow fire control personnel to batch-mobilise effectively. Functionality may include the ability to:
- Mobilise resources to a batch of incidents contained in a list or queue
- Mobilise resources to a batch of incidents plotted on a geographic information system
- Identify which operational resources have been mobilised to batches of incidents
- Identify which incident in a batch an operational resource is currently attending
Batch mobilising strategies may be applied in several ways depending on the needs of individual fire and rescue services and the facilities available. For example, a fire and rescue service may decide to:
- Batch-mobilise centrally from fire control, conducted by fire control personnel
- Batch-mobilise centrally from an incident support room, conducted by fire control personnel, operational personnel, non-operational personnel or a combination of these
- Decentralise batch mobilising to local areas, where operational resources may be pooled at different strategic locations (for example, fire stations) and batches of incidents passed to a local commander to determine which local resources to mobilise
Whichever batch mobilising strategy is selected, methods of communication with fire control should be agreed and maintained, and incident logs appropriately and accurately updated with relevant actions and decisions.
Availability systems
Electronic availability systems allow fire and rescue services to effectively view and forecast the availability of operational resources across a range of different duty systems. Many electronic availability systems are integrated with mobilising systems, providing fire control personnel with up-to-date resource availability information at the point of mobilising. The integration of availability systems with mobilising systems:
- Provides fire control personnel with the most up-to-date information for mobilising
- Reduces time spent manually updating mobilising system records
- Minimises opportunities for human error
Availability systems are an effective method for fire control personnel to forecast availability of operational resources. This may be particularly useful when planning batch mobilisation strategies or identifying shortfalls in operational resource availability.
Electronic availability systems may include the ability to identify specific skills or attributes held by operational personnel or resources. Fire control personnel may be able to search systems to identify and mobilise the closest, most appropriate skill set or attribute, such as a water rescue specialist or tactical adviser.