Case Study: West Midlands Fire Service achieves optimised risk-based resource allocation with Cadcorp Workload Modeller

GIS for risk assessment and workload modelling - the experience of West Midlands Fire Service

West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) needed a faster, transparent way to predict risk, optimise appliance and crew deployment, and protect response times across a 350‑square‑mile area serving 2.6 million people and around 1 million dwellings while facing budget cuts and predicted savings of up to £30m over four years. After finding existing modelling slow and opaque, WMFS commissioned Cadcorp to build a bespoke application to meet its location‑allocation and risk‑based workload modelling requirements.

Cadcorp delivered Workload Modeller, a GIS‑based tool that ingests some 130,000 incident records plus road, station, vehicle and staffing data to describe historical demand, prescribe optimal appliance allocations, and run what‑if simulations (hourly appliance use, station resilience, relocation, new vehicle types). Workload Modeller replaced the slower legacy system, lets analysts run repeated simulations and export results to Excel/Access, and directly supports WMFS’s value‑for‑money programme — helping identify under‑ and over‑resourced stations and underpinning ongoing efficiency gains as the service pursues further savings.

West Midlands Fire Service

Vikki Sharpe

Data Analyst and member of the Operational Intelligence Team