Fire and rescue air support: the past, the present, the future

Air support for the UK Fire and Rescue Services has always been limited due to extortionate setup and operating costs; that is, until recently. The introduction of drone technology has offered a step change in air support availability and capability for Fire and Rescue Services; reducing risk, reducing cost and reducing environmental impact. Drones have become a game-changer and this is just the beginning.

Air support is widely considered to be an integral component of modern Emergency Services, offering better situational awareness for enhanced safety and saving valuable time when it matters most to ultimately save lives.¹ The Royal United Services Institute’s (RUSI) report on Blue Light Air Assets explained that ‘air support has an important role to play in delivering specialist staff and equipment to incident scenes, particularly over large distances to locations that are remote or difficult to access by road or sea; providing aerial observation to inform command and control decisions and to track and record criminal activities; ensuring the quick transfer of seriously injured casualties from the incident site to hospital or from one hospital to another; enabling the safe rescue of sailors, surfers and swimmers who encounter difficulties at sea; searching for lost hikers and mountain climbers; and enabling access to vessels on fire at sea.’² 

Despite its many benefits, there is no national helicopter service that is dedicated to Fire and Rescue Services in the UK, like there is for the Police and Coastguard services. Although, there was a single helicopter contracted to be on stand-by in Wales, exclusively for wildfires,⁴ and there have been many helicopter trials. London Fire Brigade trialled the potential use of helicopters, which estimated an average response time of 13 minutes by helicopter against approximately 30 minutes for a fire appliance, for example.² More recent studies have identified time savings too. For example, Avon Fire & Rescue Service led a series of trials in 2011 where the use and feasibility of a helicopter was tested.³ Helicopter response was trialled for 10 pre-planned operational exercises. The testing exercises included:

• 3x road traffic collision scenarios;
• 2x swift water rescue scenarios;
• 2x cliff rescue scenarios;
• 2x urban search and rescue scenarios; and
• 1x hazardous detection, identification and monitoring scenario³

To form a performance comparison regarding response times, the usual road response vehicles were also mobilised and timed. To quote the author of the trials’ report: ‘It was clear from the trials that the use of a helicopter was a success … this should prove, beyond doubt, that the use of helicopters by the UK fire services is a valid way forward.’³

And yet, unfortunately little progress seems to have been made to enable a national fire and rescue helicopter service since these 2011 trials. That being said, as mentioned in the National Police Collaboration Agreement for the National Police Air Service (NPAS), ‘Partnership’ is included as an NPAS user requirement in order to deliver a more effective response from the public services. Therefore, Fire and Rescue services can make requests to NPAS for air support. However, it also explicitly states within the aforementioned collaboration agreement that ‘working for partners is NOT a core role of police air operations’.⁵ Meaning that the requests for air support made by any Emergency Service outside of Policing, would not be a primary service for NPAS; response will only be actioned by using spare capacity and therefore cannot be guaranteed, especially not with the same response times that Police Forces receive. Not to mention, an independent study of police air support, conducted by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) and titled ‘Planes, drones and helicopters’, highlighted that NPAS aircraft and crew are available to Police Forces, on average, only 54.9% of each year – let alone to Fire and Rescue Services.⁶ 

Furthermore, supporting other Emergency Services is also a key aim for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s (MCA) Search and Rescue Helicopter (SAR-H) service. QinetiQ conducted a comprehensive Post-Implementation Review on behalf of the MCA, which assessed the effectiveness and performance of the current SAR-H contract. Said review described the key aims for SAR-H, one of which was ‘Support for other Emergency Services – interface with other rescue partners’⁷; that particular requirement would include supporting UK Fire and Rescue Services. QinetiQ’s review also clarified that although SAR-H’s support for other Emergency Services is being widely achieved, there are still areas where improvements could be made to benefit the other rescue partners – perhaps suggesting that the Fire and Rescue Services do not yet receive the best level of support that SAR-H could someday offer.⁷ This report, however, was published in 2019, two years ago at the point of writing this article; progress could have been achieved since the report’s publication.

Additionally, the MCA for a short time provided a capability to the Fire and Rescue Services to transport firefighters and equipment to enable firefighting to take place at sea, if necessary. This facility was subsequently withdrawn by the MCA due to long periods of inactivity for the highly skilled crews that delivered this service.³ Although this service wasn’t operationally deployed frequently, without this capability, there is a significant weakness in the ability and resilience of tackling fires at sea.

All in all, although Fire and Rescue Services can make requests to the two different national air services, their needs and demands would clearly be better met if the Fire and Rescue Services had control of their own or shared national air service. Evidently, the extortionate costs associated with setting up and running a helicopter service have been too prohibitive to form a national helicopter service that is dedicated to the Fire and Rescue Services, despite clear operational need. A Helicopter Feasibility Study undertaken by Essex Fire and Rescue Service estimated that each helicopter would cost £1.2–1.4m annually, presenting a significant and perhaps insurmountable barrier to entry for Fire and Rescue Services to fulfil their need for a helicopter service.² By its very nature, Fire and Rescue demand is usually reactive in nature, which makes it harder than for Police Forces to provide a cost vs benefit analysis for equipment that would provide preventative actions.⁷ Air support for the Fire and Rescue Services in England and Wales has always been limited and ad hoc. That is, until recently.

The recent introduction of drone technology has offered a step change in air support availability and capability for Fire and Rescue Services. In fact, London Fire Brigade’s website describes the significant value that drones bring to their operations:

‘By providing an aerial view of an incident, drones help Incident Commanders develop tactics to help tackle it. Drones may also be able to access areas which are unsafe for firefighters. Overall, they improve safety for our crews, and help improve our response to incidents.’⁸ 

The drones in operation by Emergency Services today vary from about £1,450 to £60,000.⁶ When compared to the aforementioned annual helicopter cost of £1.2–1.4m, drones are the most cost-effective form of air support to have existed. Therefore, Fire and Rescue Services have not been prohibited with drones in the same way they were with helicopters. Not to mention, drones produce 99.91% less kilograms of carbon emissions than SAR-H⁹ and produce 96% less carbon emissions and 60% less noise pollution than NPAS helicopters;¹⁰ thus drones are also a significant step forwards in nationwide sustainability goals. Reducing risk, reducing cost and reducing environmental impact, drones have become a game-changer for air support.

As such, the use of drones by Fire and Rescue Services and other Emergency Services has increased over recent years. According to online materials alone, 29 Fire and Rescue Services and 39 Police Forces have adopted drone technology across the UK.¹¹ The rate of adoption is also expected to continue increasing as the technological capability advances.1 The range of operational roles for which drones are used is expanding and, as camera technology, battery capacity and thermal imaging evolves, drones are becoming increasingly capable of delivering an effective operational outcome in a range of use cases. However, fire response remains the primary use case for Fire and Rescue Service drone operations. Drones are able to provide a higher height of eye advantage and safer view of a fire. Putting a drone in the sky provides a real-time image of a fire, enabling firefighters to make better-informed time-critical decisions based on the enhanced situational awareness picture being captured by the drone; ultimately, ‘it’s a safer way of assessing the situation rather than putting human lives at risk’.¹³

Importantly, and most excitingly, this is just the beginning for the drone revolution. The drone industry as a whole is highly innovative and fast-moving; and as a myriad of regulatory bodies scramble to keep up with the rate of adoption and evolution of drone technology, one thing is clear: beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations will unlock the next level of the drone revolution for the Emergency Services, and beyond. The global BVLOS drone market (revenue) is currently estimated at approximately $19B, with annual growth (CAGR) of nearly 6% and a projected market size of $34B by 2029.¹⁵ The esteemed research company MarketsandMarkets estimates that first responders will be among the applications that will enjoy the highest demand for this market. As such, a BT-lead and UK Government-backed consortium, named ‘Project XCelerate’, is establishing the UK’s first commercial drone corridor in open and unrestricted airspace, which will be 8km long and located south of Reading, Berkshire, and one of its key areas of focus is emergency response. SkyBound Rescuer will be leading emergency response trials within this airspace corridor from January 2022; the drones will be stationed in HeroTech8’s drone-in-a-box platform (see image) and tasked through SkyBound Rescuer’s Drone Mission Coordinator, which will automate optimised mission plans. In particular, SkyBound Rescuer will be testing the use of BVLOS drones in missing person (MISPER) searches and road traffic collision (RTC) scenarios. Both incidents frequently occur across the UK, both require rapid response for maximal effect and the implementation of drones has already produced great lifesaving results across both incidents too; these were amongst the deciding factors for the selection. Not to mention, in the UK, the annual number of RTCs is around 25,500,¹⁶ with MISPER incidents being approximately 313,000 per annum;¹⁷ this is a huge cost and time burden for UK Emergency Services. Project XCelerate aims to speed up response to these incidents, thus improving survival rates and reducing costs.

Presently, we are experiencing only a fraction of the lifesaving and public safety potential that drones could someday offer UK Emergency Services. This is because, currently, a drone needs to travel in the first response vehicle to the incident site before it can be manually launched and operated. The true benefits of air support are realised when response times are reduced, because response times can act as a proxy metric for achieving the primary role of air support: safeguarding human life. Therefore, the current inability of drones to fly directly to the incident site is impeding this new technology’s potential. Whereas, Project XCelerate will enable drones to race ahead of rescue teams and become the first eyes on scene, thus unlocking the next level of the drones for good revolution in the UK.

For more information, go to www.skyboundrescuerproject.com 

References

1. NPCC, 2019. Aviation User Requirement [online]. NPCC: Gloucestershire Constabulary. 1-13.
2. RUSI, 2011. Blue Light Air Assets: Cost-effective Operations for the Future [online]. London: Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).
3. Cornish, S., 2012. Air Support for the Fire & Rescue Services Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Travelling Fellowship Report 2012 [unpublished]. Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.
4. EWWF, 2019. DEFRA Wildfire Review: Report from the Wildlife Workshop held in Nottingham on 8th February 2019 [unpublished]. The England & Wales Wildfire Forum.
5. West Yorkshire Police, 2013. National Police Collaboration Agreement [online].
6. HMICFRS, 2017. Planes, drones and helicopters: An independent study of police air support [online]. Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS).
7. QinetiQ, 2019. UK Search and Rescue Helicopters: Post-Implementation Review [online]. Hampshire: QinetiQ.
8. https://www.london-fire.gov.uk/about-us/services-and-facilities/vehicles-and-equipment/drones/
9. Alcock, 2015. Future Trends & Sustainbility [private paper]. 
10. NPAS, 2021. Helicopters, Drones and Planes – Future Police Air Support Deliver. [DroneX Presentation]
11. SkyBound Rescuer, 2021. Volume 4 – Emergency Drone Network Review [private paper].
12. SkyBound Rescuer, 2019. Drone Procedure Optimisation Study [online]. / Cornish, S., 2012. Air Support for the Fire & Rescue Services Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. Travelling Fellowship Report 2012 [unpublished]. Winston Churchill Memorial Trust.
13. https://dronesaferegister.org.uk/blog/drones-for-emergency-services/
14. PwC, 2018. Skies Without Limits [online]
15. BIS Research, 2019. Global BVLOS Drone Market.
16. DfT, 2019. Reported road casualties in Great Britain: 2018 annual report [online].
17. UK Missing Persons Bureau, 2019. Missing Persons: Data and Analysis [online].