West Midlands Fire Service signs up with Unblur

In its second major contract in recent months, Barcelona firm Unblur will now trial its incident command system with West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS). Starting with a six month proof of concept, Unblur’s technology will initially be run in one area covering five fire stations and help the service evolve the way that its firefighters work using Unblur’s IRIS Core solution for incident response.

As part of delivery, IRIS Core will integrate with WMFS IT systems including its command and control, mobilisation system, Site-Specific Risk Information and water hydrant data. After successfully integrating and deploying the solution within the proof of concept, Unblur hopes that IRIS Core will be rolled out service wide to all of WMFS’s 38 fire stations and 1,164 firefighters.

“We are excited to announce this fantastic collaboration with Unblur. It will involve a six-month proof of concept period introducing a new approach to incident management, command and control and command support. We also anticipate significant improvements to firefighter safety and post-incident learning. Ultimately, this is about supporting our assertive, effective and safe response to incidents for the benefit of our communities, making the West Midlands safer, stronger and healthier.”

Watch Manager Paul Dunnell, West Midlands Fire Service.

WMFS purchased the IRIS Core solution through the G-cloud framework. Using the G-cloud framework speeds up the digitalisation process and empowers WMFS to scale quickly from the small group of initial users to the whole organisation. Alfonso Zamarro, CEO of Unblur said that the G-Cloud framework fosters innovation for fire and rescue services. “Within months we can put our incident command technology in the hands of a small group of firefighters and be operational with IRIS Core. The learning from this group will help to roll out the implementation in the most simple and effective way for the whole service.”