Amsterdam, 25 October 2010

Bart van Leeuwen is a firefighter with the Amsterdam Fire Brigade. In a guest posting on the weblog of the Open Knowledge Foundation, he explains how linked data is of use to fighting fires.

"Working as a firefighter in the city of Amsterdam, will Linked Open Government Data help me fight fires? Probably not, but during the development of an innovative new way of assisting fire truck navigation, I found out that Linked Open Data could at least assist us getting to incidents easier and faster. One valuable addition for us is to plot the location where work is done on the city infrastructure, e.g. roadblocks. We do not maintain this information ourselves, so we went out to the department supplying this information."

In earlier presentations, also by a colleague of his, it was indicated that three types of data, held in other PSB's, are of relevance to the fire brigade: construction works and other activities, presence of hazardous materials in buildings, water depths and obstacles below surface. Getting that type of data as 'open data' is the best way to make it useful for the fire brigade itself again. To reduce the response and approach times, as well as reduce exposure to risks, which ultimately helps saving lives. However:

"Demanding other government departments to open up their data to us is a pretty tough job if there is no municipal wide policy on opening data. Of course, the questions the fire department asks are very well understood, and there is a great will to assist us but people still have cold feet on this issue. What could others do with it, are we allowed to do this, what are the risks etc.?"

To strengthen their own case in getting access to data of other PSB's, the Amsterdam Fire Brigade decided to walk their own talk.

"We decided to go the other way around, in the talks we had with other departments we already noticed that they were also interested in information we could supply. This led to the initiative of publishing structured data related to incidents which is out on the web unstructured already. This way our department is giving a good example and we have a better position in demanding open data from others. A very interesting side effect is that even in our own organisation people start to think about opening up information for the organisation as a whole. For example information that was locked up in excel sheets now is included" A website is being prepared where the Amsterdam fire brigade's structured data can be accessed.