Adapting to change in your community: Lifesaving data for fire and rescue services

Understanding Data

To Judge the Reliability of Community Insight and analysis reports, it’s vital to understand the difference between the types of data they’re based on.

Data is a valuable resource for public service providers who want to understand the communities they serve and provide the most effective communication and support to meet their needs. For Fire and Rescue Services (FRS), analysis of information about residents, the local area, types of incidents and causes can help make protection and prevention services even more effective.

But not all data is equal. How do you know whether it is up-to-date and accurate? Does it cover every household and area? What is missing? It could make a big difference to the effectiveness of decision-making and service provision if the information you’re relying on is old, doesn’t include everything you need or is not detailed and specific enough.

In this blog we explain what different types of data are, so you know how and when to use and trust them. Understanding of the pros and cons of each type of data will give you a strong foundation for building a blended data approach that allows for a greater level of insight than ever before.

Open Data

This data is official and since it’s on the Open Government Licence, free. There are limitations: sources are rarely measured at low-level geographies, and they can be several years out of date. It’s several years since the last census: it’s almost certain that new homes been built and parts of the community have changed in that time.

Open data sources, such as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Home Office, are ideal for building a top-level picture of your communities. But it doesn’t provide a detailed and complete view. At best, the data is usually presented at Output Area level (around 100 households.) This means at-risk residents can be hidden – not ideal when you’re trying to target limited resources towards those who need it most.

Open data is an important starting point. But it’s seldom fit for purpose in its raw form. It needs to be blended with other, complementary data sources.

Administrative Data

This is the data you collect internally. Its value lies in its uniqueness to your FRS. Everything you collect, from Home Safety Visit data to fire incident information, is specific to your community, which means it’s highly relevant and frequently updated.

There are some limitations. Not every resident within the community interacts with your service, so there are many people and households you have no data for. People at future risk may be excluded.
Sharing administrative data between departments and colleagues is often subject to strict governance regulations which can make it harder to use. Your compliance or legal team will need to check that data is being used in a way that’s compatible with the purposes it was collected for.

Your own administrative data provides a detailed snapshot of part of your community. In conjunction with open data, segmentation and other commercial sources, it has the potential to provide a deeper level of insight.

Commercial Data

Commercial datasets draw from a variety of frequently updated sources to paint a picture of your community today. Commercial data allows for easy segmentation at a household and postcode level, for a detailed level of information. You get a deeper understanding of lifestyle and demographic characteristics right across your community.

Information from a commercial dataset provides scale and granularity. It can offer insight that open and administrative data lacks, revealing factors such as online activity, engagement, channel preferences, behavioural and lifestyle characteristics.

You have to pay for commercial datasets. So you’ll want to be sure you’re getting value for money. Check that the data is up-to-date, regularly refreshed and doesn’t exclude any part of your community. Find out how detailed the coverage is: do you get information by postcode or household?

Health and Wellbeing Data

For FRS, it’s valuable to know about the health and wellbeing status of community members, in order to prioritise the most vulnerable and at-risk residents for home safety visits.

Wellbeing segmentation is a commercial dataset that’s unique to CACI. It gives insight into potential factors which may lead to an increase in certain residents being more at risk or vulnerable. This means your FRS can effectively allocate resources for community outreach and service provision.

The CACI health and wellbeing dataset helps you identify residents who are elderly, socially isolated or have health dependencies at household level.

Postcode and Household Data

Postcode segmentation reflects the mix of people within a postcode and so focuses on describing the very local neighbourhood. For a FRS, postcode segmentation can identify the types and frequency of fires that happen in a given area, helping to inform general preventative initiatives.

Household segmentation places more emphasis on individual household attributes such as tenure, family structure and lifestage. This level of segmentation helps your FRS identify individual, at-risk people in otherwise safe postcodes. It’s this specific analysis that gives you visibility of all residents and helps you engage with them in effective ways tailored to their needs and capabilities.

If you’d like to find out more about blending different types of data to achieve the focused level of insight that your FRS needs for prevention, engagement and protection, click here to talk to CACI’s FRS data team.