Incident Locations
















Alarm
Citizen Assist / Service Call
Electrical Hazard
Elevator Rescue
Fuel Spill
Gas Leak (Natural and LP Gases)
HazMat
Medical Incident
Odor (Strange / Unknown)
Other
Outside Fire
Smoke Investigation (Outside)
Structure Fire
Traffic Collision
Train / Rail Incident
Vehicle Fire
Water Rescue

This chart displays the average time it takes for emergency responders to become available again after arriving on scene, organized by incident type.
Train and rail incidents seem to take the longest to resolve, followed by building fires and water rescues. However, note that because of the large differences in sample sizes, the data shown may be inaccurate for certain types of incidents.

This chart displays the number of occurences of each incident. Click on the labels to toggle each type of incident.
The incident that overwhelmingly occurred the most was medical emergencies, followed by alarms and building fires.

  • Alarm
  • Citizen Assist / Service Call
  • Electrical Hazard
  • Elevator / Escalator Rescue
  • Fuel Spill
  • Gas Leak (Natural and LP Gases)
  • HazMat
  • Medical Incident
  • Odor (Strange / Unknown)
  • Other
  • Outside Fire
  • Smoke Investigation (Outside)
  • Structure Fire
  • Traffic Collision
  • Train / Rail Incident
  • Vehicle Fire
  • Water Rescue

This graph displays the number of occurences of a certain incident type throughout the day. Again, due to the smaller sample sizes for some incidents, there may be insufficient data for certain incident types to draw any meaningful conclusions. However, there are some interesting trends that can be seen from this data; for example, there is a noticeable increase in traffic collisions around 8AM and 5-6PM when people are going to and from work.

Given an address and time, this attempts to predict the most likely dispatch that would be sent to that area as well as the most likely emergency that would occur.

To the left is a graph displaying the average amount of time it takes to get to an emergency sorted by zipcode. The zipcode with the longest dispatch time is 94130, followed by 94131 and 94105. These are Treasure Island, the Twin Peaks area, and the Rincon Hill area respectively.

Zipcode 94130

Treasure Island only has one fire station located on the northern part of the island, and it is connected to San Francisco only by the Oakland Bay Bridge. For small emergencies, one fire station may be sufficient, but for bigger emergencies, having to call in other stations off the island would explain why dispatch times would be bigger. Also, on the heatmap below, most of the emergencies occurred on the bottom part of the island on Yerba Buena. Since the fire station is located on the northern part of the island, the travel time between these two places could also explain why the dispatch times were longer.

Zipcode 94131

The Twin Peaks area has no fire stations located in their zipcode district, but there are a few on the outskirts. This could be a major reason that the dispatch times are longer in this area. Another reason could be the terrain; the hills and winding, indirect roads would make it difficult for emergency vehicles to get to locations quickly.

Zipcode 94105

The Rincon Hill area is located right off the connection of San Francisco and the Oakland Bay Bridge with two fire stations. It is a densely populated area of the city, being in downtown San Francisco. Because of the sheer size of the population there, more emergency calls would occur in that area, as well as generate large amounts of traffic, which would explain why dispatch times are longer here.

How can dispatch times be reduced?

The most obvious solution for improving dispatch times would be creating more stations around the city, especially in denser parts of the city such as the downtown area. However, other solutions may lie in improving traffic flows across the city so that emergency vehicles can get to places more rapidly or creating more access points to locations by building more roads.

To the right, a heatmap of all incidents is shown. It's clear that most of the emergencies occur in the downtown region of San Francisco, so while it is important to have enough stations there to service the massive population in that region, it is also important not to neglect the outer regions as there is still a need for strong dispatch centers, indicated by the pockets of activity on the heatmap outside of the downtown area.