Spatial Modelling of Emergency Service Response Times

Abstract

Summary The paper concerns the statistical modelling of emergency service response times. We apply advanced methods from spatial survival analysis to deliver inference for data collected by the London Fire Brigade on response times to reported dwelling fires. Existing approaches to the analysis of these data have been mainly descriptive; we describe and demonstrate the advantages of a more sophisticated approach. Our final parametric proportional hazards model includes harmonic regression terms to describe how the response time varies with the time of day and shared spatially correlated frailties on an auxiliary grid for computational efficiency. We investigate the short-term effect of fire station closures in 2014. Although the London Fire Brigade are working hard to keep response times down, our findings suggest that there is a limit to what can be achieved logistically: the paper identifies areas around the now closed Belsize, Bow, Downham, Kingsland, Knightsbridge, Silvertown, Southwark, Westminster and Woolwich fire stations in which there should perhaps be some concern about the provision of fire services.