Lithium-Ion Batteries, Fireworks, Heat Relief Operations and Reducing Your Community's Risk

In the past couple years the Phoenix Fire Department has shifted to using data to identify and mitigate risks. The department saw an uptick in lithium-ion battery fires and put a data collection model in place to identify trends to aid in the appropriate operational training programs and educate the community on what was causing these fires and educate on safe use of lithium ion battery products. This quickly became a statewide data collection program with around a dozen departments sharing their data for a broader perspective on fire activity. Several other states have now begun this same data collection using our framework as a starting point. We will share how we started our data collection, what we have learned from it and how data can benefit other departments as well.

Next we will cover the how the Phoenix Fire Department has collected, analyzed and used fire activity surrounding the major fireworks holidays (primarily New Year's and Fourth of July) to educate the community on safe fireworks use and disposal, and how additional data was reviewed to assess how effective those community education efforts were this past Fourth of July.

Lastly, we will share how several datasets were used to outline our summer heat relief operation for this past summer, as well as data collection metrics that were put in place to be able to, in real time, assess how successful those efforts were and direct other city resources to aide in areas where we were still seeing calls for service.