During emergency situations, society relies upon the efficient response time and effective services of emergency facilities that include fire departments, law enforcement, search and rescue, and emergency medical services (EMS). As such, it is imperative that emergency crews are outfitted with technologies that can cut response time and can also predict where such events may occur and prevent them from happening. The safety of first responders is also of paramount concern. New tools can be implemented to map areas of vulnerability for emergency responders, and new strategies can be devised in their training to ensure that they are conditioned to respond efficiently to an emergency and also conscious of best safety protocols. Improving the Safety and Efficiency of Emergency Services: Emerging Tools and Technologies for First Responders addresses the latest tools that can support first responders in their ultimate goal: delivering their patients to safety. It also explores how new techniques and devices can support first responders in their work by addressing their safety, alerting them to accidents in real time, connecting them with medical experts to improve the chances of survival of critical patients, predicting criminal and terrorist activity, locating missing persons, and allocating resources. Highlighting a range of topics such as crisis management, medical/fire emergency warning systems, and predictive policing technologies, this publication is an ideal reference source for law enforcement, emergency professionals, medical professionals, EMTs, fire departments, government officials, policymakers, IT consultants, technology developers, academicians, researchers, and students.

A review is presented of the state of the art of smoke production measurement, prediction of smoke impact as part of computer-based fire modeling, and measurement and prediction of the impact of smoke through deposition of soot on and corrosion of electrical equipment. The literature review on smoke corrosivity testing and damage due to smoke deposition emphasizes (despite extensive research on smoke corrositity) the lack of validated and widely applicable prescriptive or performance based methods to assure electrical equipment survivability given exposure to fire smoke. Circuit bridging via current leakage through deposited smoke was identified as an important mechanism of electronic and electrical equipment failure during NPP fires. In the near term, assessment of potential damage can reasonably be based on the airborne smoke exposure concentration and, perhaps, the exposure duration. Hence, models that can predict the airborne smoke concentration would be sufficient to suit short-term analysis needs. In the longer term, it would be desirable to develop models that could estimate the deposition behavior of smoke, as well and specifically correlate the combination of deposited and airborne smoke to component damage.