Tiina Etelälahti


Tiina Etelälahti

Dr Teija Mankkinen is Ministerial Advisor in the Ministry of the Interior, Finland, at the Department of Rescue Services. She is responsible for national coordination of research and development. In addition, she has various work tasks related to strategical planning, data management and evaluation. Her dissertation in sociology dealed with firefighters' identity discources (Firefighters' work as a profession and as a way of life, only in Finnish).

5 October 2023 13:00 - 13:45
Room A

Introduction:
Fire and Rescue organizations in Finland have responsibility to prevent incidents and accidents in addition to incident related rescue tasks and services. The main objective is to reduce and manage risks and mitigate the amount of damage. To implement this task, rescue organizations provide different services to residents, local authorities and communities. There has not been unified way to measure performance nor quality of these different services. The main reason has been the lack of concurrent planning model, which would take account also local operating environment. At Finland, new legislation reform has taken place at the beginning of 2023 and the rescue services tasks are now defined more consistently than before. New legislation and implementation of capability-driven planning model gives new possibilities to construct performance and quality measures of the services.

Objective:
This study addresses the Finnish planning model for rescue services and is focused on prevention of incidents and accidents -task and related services. The main aim of the study is to define useful performance measures and indicators using national viewpoint. The secondary aim is to make preliminary conclusions of the compatibility of the indicators from three perspectives: the need of services, service performance indicators, effectiveness and long-term impact. The planning model structure is based on capability driven approach, which also enables anticipation of future needs and quality of services.

Methods:
The study is based on data from the Statistic system of Finnish rescue services (PRONTO), which is used to make area comparisons (wellbeing county). In addition, also the first preliminary inquiry data collected from wellbeing county services were used. This data is primarily used to govern and guide the rescue services at yearly basis. The data evaluation is based on the structure of capability-driven planning model and its quality contents. Results This study defines and presents first performance and quality measures and indicators of prevention of incidents and accidents -task and related services, and their differences between regions in Finland.

Conclusions:
The study process has produced new information of planning model usability in different operating environment. Also, the defined indicators and measures could be used in national level guidance ja development of services. Also new approaches are suggested to evaluate service performance and quality.

Keywords: Prevention of Incidents and Accidents, fire and rescue services, legislation reform, indicator development, planning model, capability