Consuming GeoRSS and querying OpenStreetMap

In Adelaide, there was an unexpected fire. It was a bushfire, and I'd just been mapping the area earlier that day - ironically, tracing some of the forests which were being burnt out at that very point in time.

I decided to go and see what was available for fire alerts around the nation.

It turns out the majority of fire authorities publish GeoRSS. I took the feeds and aggregated them, plus put in a transformation of the data to JSON.

Using Leaflet, I added a rendering of particular fires.

Using the OpenStreetMap Overpass API, I queried for "all areas in a 500m bounding box", and again using Leaflet, rendered those polygons onto a map.

Here's the Project:
https://github.com/CloCkWeRX/burning-down

Here's a few screenshots:

Coverage, for most of Australia. WA doesn't provide openly licensed data, and South Australia's does not contain lat/long info.
The few you see in those states are from Sentinel, a satellite based system for detecting 'hot spots' that may indicate a fire.

Here, a number of resident buildings are marked as 'at risk' from a fire. In reality, these are probably safe, due to fires in these areas tending to be contained to residential areas.

On the other hand, you can certainly consider adding an Open Street Bug report if someone's house may have burned down!

This is more interesting - there's a fire or other emergency right next to a national park. National parks are made from trees, which in my experience tend to catch on a whole lot of fire!

Obviously this sort of incident is well in hand if the fire authorities are aware of it, but it is interesting to see that fuel sources are being picked up.

My next efforts here are going to be around encouraging edits near the area - if there isn't much detail on water sources (dams, swimming pools, rivers, lakes); it certainly makes sense to identify those if there's already been a fire once.

I also made a bit of effort to aggregate the feed output into sqlite - I might go run up a basic server and run this as a service at some later point, as aggregating this data seems useful.

The thing I like most about this - it's trivial to take any GeoRSS feed and query OpenStreetMap for nearby things - I've done fairly wide ranging queries with a narrow bounding box so far; but those are easy enough things to tweak.

Fire Wardens and Pointless Process

At work, we got our Fire Warden coming around to hassle us. It's a part time occupation, so he's certainly not that fussed about it.
What irks me is a job done poorly, which is effectively make work, which is only done "because we have to"; and when a real fire does occur, I'm more at risk because of this busywork than if I had never listened at all.


Here's my tongue in cheek attempt at pointing it out..

The paper instructions

These instructions we're getting are made of cardboard. Which is flammable.
I've noticed that things in a fire like to burn, including cardboard.

People like myself are most likely to litter them about my desk; creating what I believe is called LOADS OF KINDLING.

Is there a benefit to adding more potential fuel to a sudden and unexpected desk fire?

Stopping to read the instructions

In a real fire, I'm expected to stop to collect my instruction sheet, and follow it?

Typically; when unexpected things happen, they are outside of the range of normal.

Am I expected to obey the instructions under normal circumstances?

Since sudden desk fires are by themselves completely unexpected occurences, under what circumstances could I expect a normal, business as usual desk fire to occur; where these instructions will be of use to me?

Can I use my own judgement under abnormal circumstances, like an unexpected fire?

If I can use my own judgement: do I need the instructions; or is it only for those completely normal, run of the mill fires?

The research

With our current fire safety policy and adherence, what current research suggests the effectiveness of it, given our unique circumstances?

ie, that we hire people who like LOADS OF KINDLING on their desks

If you haven't had a chance to; can I suggest the reading of some of the relevant materials; to ensure we're up to date?

Fire evacuation skills training for institutionalized mentally retarded adults
* Training people to get out of a building works well with moneytary rewards.
* The Fire warden should be able to organise drills, and pay people who get out best/fastest. I suggest a mix of Amazing race vs fire drill.


EFFICIENT EVACUATION METHODS IN TALL BUILDINGS
"The movement of people in stairs can be modelled as unified crowd flows. The maximum flow per stair width unit has been measured for different types of staircases, riser heights and tread depths"
"The flow models give optimistic results, since they assume that stairs do not become overcrowded. In case there is heavy congestion, the walking speed and also the occupant flow drop significantly. If the occupant density is more than 3.8 persons per square meter, the walking speed approaches zero (Pauls 1987)"

* If a collection of chubby people (and have you seen some of these people!) cause a bottleneck, we're all doomed.
* Research suggests the Fire warden should be able to issue gym memberships

What other processes seem futile with fire safety in the work place?

Nialls newest undertaking

... is a jewelery site. He pestered me for advice as it's his first decent website job interview thing. 'Cause I'm so.. wise in the ways of the world, he obviously got the job. Or something. Well, at least he can have some pagerank :)

Fire in Ice... tasty stuff.

Technorati Tags: Jewelery, Marriage, Fire, Ice, Web Design.