Welcome to the first installment of our three-part series on Community Risk Reduction (CRR). We will be adding a new posts over the next two weeks covering a different aspect of CRR. This week, we will be discussing the evolution of Community Risk Reduction, what it means for your department, and how you can use software to help reach your CRR goals. We encourage you to check back every week to continue our look into Community Risk Reduction in the fire service. Click below to find out how ER can help with your CRR plan.
Blog 1 of 3 – Community Risk Reduction
Fire departments around the country are beginning to change the way they address community safety. Modern fire departments exist not only to respond to and mitigate emergencies, but also to act as their community’s primary risk reduction entity. In the fire service, this new approach to community safety and prevention has been termed “Community Risk Reduction.” According to Vision 20/20, the nationally recognized authority on Community Risk Reduction, “CRR is a process to identify and prioritize local risks, followed by the integrated and strategic investment of resources (emergency response and prevention) to reduce their occurrence and impact.” CRR programs are about more than just educating on the importance of sprinklers or providing free car seat inspections. They require a commitment to doing a thorough and comprehensive assessment of your community and putting response and mitigation plans in place for each identified risk.
The adoption of CRR was furthered with the introduction of NFPA 1730 – The Standard on Organization and Deployment of Fire Prevention Inspection and Code Enforcement, Plan Review, Investigation, and Public Education Operations. This standard gave fire departments direction and allowed them to compare their CRR efforts against a nationally recognized benchmark. If fire departments wished to comply with this standard, they need to complete a detailed analysis of the risks within their community and develop a CRR plan.
In addition to following the NFPA standards, some departments are going above and beyond by attempting to gain Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) accreditation, which has numerous benefits for departments willing to take the time to obtain this certification.
As a leader in Records Management Software (RMS) for fire departments and an advocate for first responders, Emergency Reporting offers a wide range of products to help support the development of a CRR plan and CPSE accreditation. One of the most useful tools for this purpose is our robust Reports Module, which enables your agency to quickly and easily run real-time reports so you can identify emerging trends, deploy assets to mitigate risks, and evaluate the effectiveness of your CRR program. The Reports Module contains predefined reports to extract and analyze departmental data.
Some examples of useful ER reports that specifically relate to CRR are:
- 1764 – Inspection Results by Inspection and Occupancy Types for Date Range
- 1362 – Occupancy Inspection History per Occupancy with Violations
- 1657 – Occupancies with Square Footage Inspector and Fire Protection System
Continue to “The Role of Education and Outreach for Community Risk Reduction (Blog 2 of 3).”
To learn more about how Emergency Reporting can help your department with its Community Risk Reduction plan, please visit: https://emergencyreporting.com/products/prevention-package/
Interested in giving Emergency Reporting a test drive? Try it out today:
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