Recently Buxton completed a pilot analysis of residential fires for the fire department of one of the nation’s largest cities. In this analysis we looked at the characteristics of residents in households where fires occurred. The goal of the analysis was to find a pattern in resident psychographics (individual lifestyles, life stages, behaviors, attitudes and finances) that correlates with fire incidents. So what did we find?
Buxton discovered that 60% of residential fire incidents occurred in two specific household types that only account for 25% of the total household mix in this metropolitan city. With these findings Buxton developed a Fire Vulnerability Index used to score every household in the city.
Armed with this targeted information this fire department is immediately working to improve their fire prevention efforts through programming (such as installation of free smoke detectors and home inspections) and direct outreach (targeting schools with students in homes most at risk and language specific direct marketing).
This is just another new approach communities are taking to use household level analytics to improve their citizens' quality of life.
What are some other ways that you have heard of the public sector doing this?
