Challenge

Partly because of its evolving role ‘from a curative to a preventive and proactive player’ Fire and Rescue Service Antwerp (Brandweer Zone Antwerpen [BZA]) is strongly committed to community fire safety. BZA focuses on target group oriented fire prevention education: through specific target groups such as age groups and ‘vulnerable’ target groups BZA wants to further spread its preventive message. To this end, BZA, also together with various partners such as the city of Antwerp, the (Belgian) Burn Foundation and Family Aid, has already set up various target group oriented educational actions. These mainly take place ‘in situ’ in BZA’s Fire Brigade Information Centre (Brandweer Informatie Centrum [BIC]) in Post Noord (fire station). The educational actions in the BIC comprise a range of educational packages ranging from individual (digital) applications to (physical) activities aimed at specific target groups such as the interactive and experience oriented ‘tour’ for 5th and 6th year pupils.

However, BZA also wants to bring its fire prevention education outside the BIC to the target groups themselves. Especially the more ‘vulnerable’ target groups find it difficult to find their way to the BIC. The educational possibilities outside the BIC are also limited when it comes to other tailor-made questions and needs.

BZA is therefore looking for a mobile version of the BIC, which is the subject of this PIP project. Specifically, BZA aims to develop a mobile platform that brings together the existing education packages (= the ‘awareness content’) and provides a tool to make these packages more experience-oriented with the help of immersive technologies (= technologies that imitate the physical world digitally, such as Virtual Reality [VR] and Augmented Reality [AR]). The intention is to make the platform and the tool openly available to all (potential) users (employees of BZA and also of other fire and rescue services and other partners in Flanders) so that the content on the platform can be used ‘anytime and anywhere’ and the users themselves can make the (existing) educational packages more experience-oriented using a ‘DIY-VR/AR’ tool. In this way BZA aims to reach a wider audience and to generate more learning effects. The platform must also be sufficiently ‘future proof’ for future applications and – bearing in mind the slogan ‘measuring is knowing’ – enable monitoring and reporting of the awareness actions. In short, the platform must comply with the so-called ‘triple A rule’ that it must be accessible ‘Anytime’, accessible ‘Anywhere’ and connectable to ‘Any device’.

This PIP project is closely linked to the ongoing PIP project Multi-purpose Security and Communication Platform (MSCP) and to initiatives (e.g. PIP projects such as Integrated Smart City Operating System for Flanders) within the framework of the Antwerp City Platform as a Service (ACPaaS) as a (possible) architecture to develop and openly make available the here envisaged platform (including the DIY tool or ‘building block’ to transform existing awareness content into experience-oriented education packages).