In recent years, firefighting forces endeavored to increase the application of IT drive in firefighting and rescue practices by closely encompassing the strategy of “strengthening fire protection through science and technology”. Faced with new technologies and new business forms such as big data, cloud computing, IoT and “internet +”, how to rely on IT innovation to facilitate construction of a stereoscopic modern crime prevention and control system and increase the capability to assure public security has become an important objective in the construction of “policing big data” in the foreseeable future.
I. Issues with the construction of big data for fire protection
（1）There is still no unified understanding of the importance of big data to fire safety. on the one hand, big data, as a brand new concept, is a term new to firefighting forces, and those not engaged in IT work know little about the prospect and value of big data application, so numerous leading officials ignore the importance of big data and equal big data drive to funding, thus repelling new technologies; on the other hand, operating departments simply regard big data as something in the province of information departments and subsequently remain indifferent to big data drive and fail to play their collaborative and supporting role, incapable to convert big data technology into operational guidance.
（2）There are still difficulties in data sharing and pooling. The core of efforts to increase the effectiveness of firefighting centers lies in data application, but the current data for firefighting mainly comes from integrated fire service information systems, and there are information barriers and information silos of varying degrees in terms of cross-agency and cross-industry data pooling and sharing. Effective information exchange and sharing mechanisms and platforms have not yet been established among departments, certain valuable public information sources and business data are relatively inaccessible to fire departments, and corresponding external data and information support is always absent when conducting law-enforcement supervision and firefighting and rescue operations, leading to increasingly salient issues of data inefficiency. How to establish effective collaboration mechanisms and develop the ability to make comprehensive use of data from industrial sectors such as safety supervision, meteorology environmental protection, transport and urban construction to guide fire fighting and protection efforts in a targeted manner has become a challenge to firefighting forces.
（3）There is an urgent need to improve the quality of internal data. Currently, data for each integrated fire service system has been substantially acquired, but statistics show that the data quality remains undesirable. The reasons mainly lie in the following three aspects: first, data acquisition tools are outdated in that data is substantially manual gathered, water source and other data needs to be manually picked, and large amounts of data are inaccurate; second, primary-level organizations consider the system design logic unreasonable and deviating from their actual work, therefore they are unwilling to use the systems, which, coupled with lack of data control measures at operating departments at all levels, means there is no reliable assurance for quality and timeliness of data. Third, there is no well-established collaboration mechanism in place when performance appraisal is conducted, and all departments suffer inconsistent standards and information asymmetry when it comes to system application and data quality appraisal, leading to a situation where primary-level entities have to make last-minute data entry and revision to cope with inspections, resulting in huge amounts of false, forged and outdated data existing in systems.
（4）Qualified personnel development needs urgently to be strengthened. In recent years, the IT drive has made remarkable progress, making fire prevention and accurate dispatching possible through use of emerging technologies such as big data, cloud computing and IoT, but the staffing structure of firefighting forces at various levels reveals that there is a prevalent lack of personnel capable to apply new technological capabilities and firefighting forces are in urgent need to staff themselves more with IT personnel and establish an interdisciplinary team capable to make comprehensive use of big data technology.
II. Suggestions regarding big data drive for fire safety
（1）Fully seek support from the Party committee and government. The big data drive for fire safety is a wide-ranging, holistic, systematic and long-term undertaking such that unified governmental leadership is the number one perquisite to high-quality and rapid development. Fire departments at various levels should proactively report to and communicate with Party committee and government, rely closely on the leadership of Party committee and government according to the requirements for public security work “shared responsibility of Party and government, dual responsibility per job and accountability for malpractice”, include the big data application for fire safety in the regional economic and social development programs and “smart city” drive, fully seek personnel, funding, resource and technical support, establish task forces and coordinate with related departments such as public security, fire safety, economy and IT, safety supervision, civil administration, health and education departments to make concerted efforts to construct and apply big data platforms for fire safety.
（2）Increase the capability and awareness of applying big data for fire safety. Firefighting forces should regard big data construction and application as a priority and an important measure in the foreseeable future, aim at strengthening fire prevention, firefighting and rescue and firefighting groundwork, further deepen the pooling, mining, correlation analysis and innovative application of big data for fire safety, and form a new fire service mechanism featuring “fire anticipation using big data + policing decision, composite supervision, firefighting and rescue, foundation building and social mobilization”. According to actual needs in business lines, construct big data analysis and anticipation models for fire safety, conduct aided decision making and effectiveness analysis and anticipation for fire risk and hazard, fulfillment of entity’s responsibilities, performance of duties of firefighting personnel and firefighting and rescue, so as to provide a decision-making basis for optimized allocation of firefighting resources, dynamic and accurate fire supervision and accurate commanding of firefighting and rescue operations.
（3） Improve the data sharing and collaboration mechanisms. Endeavor to achieve a situation where “government provides unified leadership and all departments participate”, such that government takes the lead to organize operating departments and social entities to make concerted efforts to eliminate “information silos”, realize connected and highly shared information resource networks and support work collaboration with resource sharing. For example, the safety supervision departments should include data related to hazardous chemicals in the scope of big data sharing for fire safety, and include fire safety work in the IT drive for work safety; transport departments should share with fire departments at all levels in real time with information on storage and transport of hazardous chemicals transported via vehicles and stored on port docks; housing departments of government at all levels should actively push to include data about construction projects, contractors, practitioners and their supervision and management in the scope of big data sharing for fire safety; civil affairs, education, health, commerce and other departments at all levels and service providers such as water suppliers, gas suppliers and power suppliers should include data about nursing homes, schools, hospitals, commercial, trade and service sectors and water, gas and power supply in the scope of big data sharing for fire safety.
(4) Build up the big data personnel for fire safety. Firefighting forces at all levels should highly value building up personnel constructing and applying big data for fire safety, actively take measures to form a socialized, professional fire safety big data anticipation team, and cultivate a group of specialists capable of constructing, anticipating, managing and operating so as to provide reliable talent and intellectual support for construction and application of big data for fire safety. Strengthen the liaison and cooperation between universities, scientific research institutes and big data service providers, and rely on social actors to increase the awareness and capability of applying big data for fire safety, strengthen the knowledge popularization, publicity and education of big data for fire safety and raise the levels of social cognition and application.
