Case Study: Santa Barbara County Fire Department achieves over 90% defensible-space inspection completion with Fulcrum

Conducting defensible space inspections to protect life and property from wildfires

The Santa Barbara County Fire Department, responsible for protecting over 16,000 buildings across 16 stations, struggled with a paper-based defensible‑space inspection program that created uneven workloads, poor visibility into coverage, and an inability to track completed or non‑compliant properties — resulting in fewer than half of required annual inspections being completed.

By adopting Fulcrum’s customizable mobile data‑collection and mapping platform, SBCFD moved to real‑time, decentralized inspections with simple, auto‑populated forms and quick app updates. The platform improved resource allocation and tracking, boosted inspector productivity (from about 3 to as many as 20 inspections per day), and raised annual inspection completion rates to over 90%, while retaining data to simplify future visits.

Santa Barbara County Fire Department

Matt Marsh

GIS Analyst