West Hartford Fire Department

West Hartford, CT

H2M’s Public Safety Market is working with Tecton Architects on several emergency response facility projects. As part of a public safety facilities study led by Tecton, H2M conducted a GIS location assessment for the West Hartford Fire Department.

H2M’s GIS team first took the Fire Department’s current station locations and incident data from the last 10 years and plotted these points on a map. We used the incident data to create a heat map to gain a better understanding of where incident frequency was the highest and lowest. H2M then used geospatial analysis tools to generate drive-time and drive-distance polygons around the current stations to get an estimate of the Department’s current reach from each station.
For example, one analysis generated polygons encompassing the area that responders from each station could feasibly drive to in four, five, and six minutes. This analysis helped the Fire Department get an idea of where potential gaps may be, which aided them in their planning process for relocating a current station or building a new one.

Members from H2M’s GIS team met with Tecton Architects and the West Hartford Fire Department to present and discuss the analyses that were completed. We also provided each analysis in a PDF report so Tecton and the Fire Department could utilize these findings in their planning process.
The assessment was completed on time and under budget.