Fire Department Response Times

This week in class, we were asked to analyze the Fire Department response times for any city we want and see how the city would be affected if we removed one of the fire stations. Our challenge was to visualize our data without using a map. I chose Worcester, MA, as my city and removed the Tatnuk Square Fire Station (TSFS). I chose the TSFS because it was one of the outlier fire stations (located on the West side of the city) and I wanted to see a dramatic change in coverage. I analyzed the data from the US Census Bureau for population in the city along with the Network Analyst tool to determine how many people would be affected by the closing of the TSFS, mainly taking into account the critical 6 minute sudden cardiac arrest response time.

As stated in the document, one of the flaws with this analysis is that it does not take into account the surrounding cities' fire departments. The next town over's fire department may be able to respond to a victim with sudden cardiac arrest within 6 minutes, therefore reducing the impact of closing the TSFS. Another flaw with the analysis is that it assumes equal distribution of the population over each block group in the town. This is obviously not true; some block groups are very heavily populated on one end and very rural at the other end but this is the only way to fairly represent the block group.

*Block groups are clusters of census blocks created by the Census Bureau as a geographic level between blocks and census tracts. Block groups have anywhere from 600 to 3,000 people located within them and has the most detailed population data available.

Below is the document that I created for this project.

Also, you can click here to see the actual infograph on the web!

I hope you enjoy it and keep posted for more!