Episode 289: Enhancing Firefighter Training and Exploring AI with John Oates

Episode notes

How can we strengthen firefighter training without replacing traditional methods?

Hello Smart Firefighting Community!

Welcome to another episode of covering real world innovations via interviews with fire service and technology industry experts that empower YOU to develop your very own Smart Firefighting strategy!

In this episode:

What immersive learning’s role should be in firefighter training

How to provide safer, more realistic, and repeatable training experiences

Tips for setting appropriate expectations for different stages of a firefighter’s career

Hear from John Oates - the CEO of the International Public Safety Data Institute (IPSDI) .

John shares how immersive learning and simulation can strengthen firefighter training without replacing traditional methods. He emphasizes using technology as an enhancer: bringing training to more places, engaging multiple senses, and improving knowledge transfer through tools like video and simulation.

John also discusses the importance of calibrating expectations for firefighters at different career stages and using rubrics to reduce subjectivity. The conversation closes with his perspective on how artificial intelligence is emerging as a powerful tool for sense-making in public safety.

So take a listen to hear what he has to share!

Head to www.smartfirefighting.com to discover how SFF accelerates innovation for emergency responders, to find out when our next event is, or review our curated resources!

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Chapters

1. 0:00 Intro from the TRAIN summit
2. 1:01 Starting the day at the summit
3. 7:25 Should the fire service watch film like the NFL?
4. 10:02 Simple proven tools versus high-end tech
5. 12:25 Rubrics and calibrating expectations
6. 15:50 Sense making, decision making, action taking with AI
7. 19:36 Who is leading AI adoption?
8. 21:25 AI as a coach, and replicating great instructors
9. 22:34 Wrap

Questions answered in this episode

Why should the fire service watch video of incidents like NFL teams watch film?

John Oates says NFL teams spend Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday watching film to learn what they did well and what will work against opponents. The fire service treats film as entertainment rather than education. Using video of incidents with solid after action reviews gives repeated sets and reps, lets people study tactical decisions, and helps them know the enemy by seeing how fire progresses in buildings like theirs.

Hear it at 8:09

What is the sense-making, decision-making, action-taking framework for AI?

John Oates describes sense-making as using AI to understand things you have never seen before, like new battery storage systems or large data piles. Decision-making is getting decision support once you narrow options down. Action-taking is not quite ready yet, but AI can package massive data to help you understand an environment without preconceived notions or the fog of fatigue.

Hear it at 16:35

Should new firefighters be held to the same performance standard as veterans?

John Oates says a brand new firefighter coming out of firefighter one or with one to two years should have different proficiency expectations than someone with 8, 10, or 12 years who has been to 20, 30, or 40 fires. Apply the right standard to the right person at the right time, and focus on daily or weekly training to improve skills.

Hear it at 13:18

How is AI becoming more localized for fire departments?

John Oates says the evolution over the past year is giving customers AI tools augmented by their own individual data, so answers have a local and personal flavor rather than a global one.

Hear it at 16:35

Transcript

Machine transcript of the published audio. Names may be misspelled and some sections are missing.

Ep 289 transcript

Enhancing Firefighter Training and Exploring AI with John Oates

Speakers: Kevin Sofen, John Oates

Source: Whisper medium.en machine transcription of the published Podbean audio (no original transcript found in Drive), lightly cleaned. Speakers were separated by voice clustering and then checked and assigned by hand at every speaker change. Gaps where the model returned no usable text are marked [inaudible m:ss].

[0:00] Kevin Sofen: Welcome back to the Smart Firefighting Podcast. Today, we're at the Train Summit, where leaders from across the fire service research every firefighter, whether it's in a big city or a rural volunteer department. [inaudible 0:49] much and then walked my dog and then got on the road and now we're here and I'm just putting microphones and cameras in people's faces. It's always a great way to start again. It's kind of this weird fetish that it has. It's all good. We've talked about the range of different aspects of the fire service, fire tech, artificial intelligence training. Today in particular, I want to lean into, we're here at the training responder awareness using immersive next-gen training summit working with NAF

[1:55] John Oates: specific with this project and what they're doing. [inaudible 2:00] absolutely not what [inaudible 2:11] we've got fire training

[2:55] Kevin Sofen: to be able to improve their

[3:25] John Oates: on making training on them, or a slide deck, to be able to explain to explain complicated things. And we thought that was okay and that was the best instructor adjunct that we [inaudible 4:04] replicable way, [inaudible 4:27] transferring It's a [inaudible 5:27] really train like is more felt by you, and now you have a greater understanding [inaudible 6:30] We talked briefly between

[7:25] Kevin Sofen: playing the next week and they'll spend hours and you hear some of the best football players talking about they're the best students of the game when they are just watching film. So then when you see in real time it's just you see these patterns. The fire service, do we watch film like that? Is there kind of a culture of kind of watching film? We're talking, there's also this other aspect of AR and VR and all these other cool immersive tools that, yes, have a lot of value. They are investments and we're exploring all the frameworks for that. Great, we'll

[8:09] John Oates: is there's a reason every NFL team spends part of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday watching film of their previous game and then their opponent coming because it's how they learn what they did well, what's going to work against that defense, what's going to work against that offense. The fire service, we treat film as entertainment rather than education. So what's the value, what's the impact if we have video of an incident, whether it's ours or somebody else's. And really we do a solid, particularly if it's ours, we do a solid after action review. We get the information from the people on scene and we use that in conjunction of video to legitimately now sets and reps. We have the ability to put people through it multiple times. We have the ability to run it and go like, okay, you know, what tactical decisions would you make? How does it work? How do we study film? If you've got, you know, if you've got whatever the fire problem is in your community, you would not be hard-pressed to find, okay, I've got a lot of garden apartments. You can find video of garden apartments till the cows It's like, okay, why aren't we studying that to be able to see this is fire progression and garden apartments that look like ours. National Capital Region, ton of townhouses, wood frame, lot of challenges with fire outside in, all of those things. You can find a truckload of that. Why aren't we using that to study in order to, again, from a fire ground commander, from a firefighter skill level, from a engine company boss perspective, like, okay, now you have a little bit, because you know your enemy, you know the team, you know the defense and the offense that they offense that they're going to put forward in what that building's like, how the fire burns there, and in a way that, again, we can repeat that, repeat that, repeat that, and skill-based stuff to make sure our hose stretches are good and our ladder work is good and all that stuff, and put forth on the fire ground better product, just. merely through the use in film.

[10:02] Kevin Sofen: And it reminds me of some of these simple tools that we have access to today that oftentimes maybe we're kind of sitting here and being like, oh, well, if we only had this. And if you think about, I remember Dr. Laurie had put this one slide up that showed these available tools today that actually have all these proven benefits of saving lives from smoke alarms to fire sprinkler systems to the automatic door closers to the HVAC duct kind of on that closer or to what Burke Clark always talked about of one of the most famous, infamous innovations that have like quite the controversy is seat belts. All these innovations that actually are proven to work yet still there's reluctance, there's people are sometimes remiss to even kind of, they kind of brush them off. So why is that and how do we continue to maybe break some of that stigma from thinking that the super high-end tech is what we need to solve some of our basic problems.

[11:00] John Oates: Well, and if all, air quotes, all, we did was repeatedly do the things that we know going to be successful. We would have success. And again, whether it's don't drive like an idiot, wear your seatbelt, don't pretty smoke, be proficient, you know you see that there's an increase in safety and effectiveness or effectiveness and safety depending on your lens by being skilled and proficient on the fire ground. It's better for the citizen that's having the emergency, particularly if they're if they're stuck or trapped or whatever it is in the building or even in a car crash, it leads, it reduces the likelihood of us getting dinged up because we're proficient in our skills. If we just, we just walk and don't walk that are having the emergency. And it's, you don't have to invent to say, all that, all that work's been done. let's just do the things the things that we know how to do and stay focused and stay really intentional about being that expert in your craft, whatever it is. And I don't care if you're in a large metro-sized department or you're in resume speed Iowa, those things still need to happen on a frequent basis.

[12:25] Kevin Sofen: So I couldn't agree more. We're here at the summit and from the leadership of Dr. Cade and Casey and Ken, it seems like there has been progress and I was talking with Ken here just earlier. It's been five years since this kicked off and now there's these frameworks and I was looking at earlier and I heard a comment you made again there's these simulation performance rubric and the for drivers or for pump panels and all this stuff and it seems like this is somewhat of a necessary evil but I heard a comment you just made in that room where, again, just kind of talking about the kind of the tiers of proficiency and how we put words on it. I mean, you have to put words on it. And some of it, we're trying to make it not subjective, but there needs to be certain different tiers from beginner to advanced. You made us some comment about this. What was that? And what were you trying to stay there?

[13:18] John Oates: So I think one of the things that Dr. Kate said, and that rubric is phenomenal. And I think it's going to set the framework for making, you know, people, helping people understand and making things better move forward. But the goal is how do we remove subjectivity? And it's difficult to be able to do that, do that completely. I think we, fire service, we need to calibrate our expectations too, is a brand new fire coming out of firefighter one, or maybe a couple, you know, one, two years in the department, they're getting their feet underneath them, should have a different set of expectations from a proficiency lens than somebody that's been around 8, 10, 12 years. It's probably been the 20, 30, 40 fires that's had the opportunity to hone their skills and continue to practice. That is, with that rubric, the expert level. Okay, that's what we all want to strive for. But just because we're teaching this new personality to tie their shoes and all the rudimentary things that we want to, Let's ensure that we're providing, we're applying the right standard to the right person at the right time. That brand, you know, and you've seen it in a lot of places, that brand new, kid comes through the door and kid, you know, young adult comes through the door and, you know, graduates from firefighter one and automatically we're going to like hold them to the same standard as you know, this person over here, it's been in the department for 25 years and is the most skilled human in the fire department, that's what they should strive for, but to expect them to just with a wave of magic wand and a little bit of certification to get there immediately, I think is flawed. And that's why I sp part of that is really the focus of daily, you know, if you're in a career department, the daily training in the fire station, if you're in a volunteer fire department, like what are we doing on a weekly basis? What's the training regimen for our community-based fire department on, you know, to get and make the most of our Monday night, Tuesday night, however you do it, to improve those skills on the things that we do that matter. And then the things that we haven't done in a while that we probably ought to go back and do that because it's relatively complicated and we haven't had to do it in an incident. So I think it provides a tremendous framework to allow us to have that mental jog to understand like, okay, at what point in their development is this human and what standard do I apply to them? than just putting them all in the same bucket and expecting the same performance out of everybody.

[15:50] Kevin Sofen: Thanks John, and appreciate that context. And it's been 16 minutes in this pod and the question I'm about to ask you next could probably ignite a hour-long podcast, but I'd be remiss because I was on the podcast the other day and mentioned some of your comments, some of your encouraging but cautionary tale, the buzzword of artificial intelligence and the fire service. And you had pulled up a sort of a sense-making framework when thinking about these different steps of where AI makes sense and then kind of where we have to caution. If you could kind of just for a minute, from that presentation that's how you gave and sort of again, the AI integration to public safety, if you could run me through that little kind of, that mini presentation you gave, I'd love to hear some of your thoughts and where you stand today.

[16:35] John Oates: So it's funny in preparation for, I did a presentation last Thursday for a fire chief organization and actually went back and changed a bunch of stuff because the pace of change in the artificial intelligence particularly as it applies to emergency services and things out of the traditional applications is still moving at a ludicrous pace. so there's continues to be this evolution but a good way to look at artificial intelligence application for us is sense making, decision making, action taking. We're probably not to action taking yet but we certainly can use it relative to sense making and for sense making is How do I make sense out of things I've never seen before? I don't know anything about something new landed in my community. You look, you know, today, there's a lot of places in rural America that are getting battery energy storage systems, that are getting large solar farms, things that traditionally we don't see in small communities, that perhaps small fire departments aren't equipped or don't have the knowledge. Go, okay, how do I? I make sense out of what that impact is? You know, how do I make sense out of, your boss, your small fire department EMS agency, your boss said, I want you to do a community paramedicine project, mobile integrated healthcare. I don't know anything mobile integrated healthcare. How do I make sense out of that? Or you're looking at a big pile of data that you just don't have time to parse through and go, okay, how do I make sense out of all of this stuff in a way that allows me to start making decisions? And some of that too is the, I've narrowed it down to two, what's my decision support for those two things to help me make those decisions? Now, we're not the point where it's going to do the action for us, but to be able to take massive amounts of data and help package it up in a way that allows us to understand what that environment without the cloud of preconceived notion, without the cloud of particularly maybe in it in a disaster, the fog of fatigue and things like that and like I've got all of the stuff going on, how do I make sense out of it is really interesting. We've seen this evolution over the past maybe past year, evolution calibration that we're working on. Is how do we give customers artificial intelligence tools that are augmented by their own individual data. So now it localizes and personalizes information that answer you're getting back is augmented by your own data has a local flavor rather than literally a global flavor. So I think it will continue to evolve. I think we're some really thoughtful places where it's landing. I think as we mess around with that, it'll start to coalesce. I think when we have this conversation a year from now, it's going to be yet another story, even six months from now or even three months from now, it'll be another step forward because it just, It just continues to spin in ways that I don't think all of us ever expected.

[19:36] Kevin Sofen: It seems like we need this level of granularity in terms of how to train on it, how to use it, where to use it, where to start, where to kind of grow into, crawl, walk, run. Does anyone leading that right now, or any insights in terms of terms of in terms of AI is being adopted within the fire service?

[19:52] John Oates: I think it's the unwritten chapter of the fire service tech roadmap that we had the discussion last summer about. like okay let's look at since that document that really well done this document has been done since that was completed what have we done how has it worked out what new things have occurred since then and like what future tech needs to needs to happen and how we lay that out in a way that look there are some there's some high performing organizations that are doing phenomenal stuff and then there's you know there's the rest of the world that's just struggling to try to get by and I think that's part of it is how do you know are just struggling to get apparatus out the door to go to calls. Like how do you give something like that and some tools to fire chief leaders of organizations to say, hey, take a look at this. And that was one of the deliverables I used last week is like, look, here's some AI enabled tools to make your life easier, particularly one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is how do I research? How do I write? How do I put stuff together? Well, there's some pretty good tools there to at least get you started. It's not gonna do it for you, but it'll at least give you some support, particularly when you're stuck, like I don't even know where to start with.

[21:03] Kevin Sofen: Yeah what are some better ways, how can I ask better questions? Or what are ways that I can, you know, have this be a more fluid conversation or whatever it may be, it's sort of, it can be a sort of a evaluation coach for ideas that you have.

[21:37] John Oates: And particularly like, yeah, when you get something all done and then, you know, you give it to Grammarly or one of these other tools and you're like, it hated it. And it's like, we, and then you get to look at the final project and you're like, oh yeah, it made it better, right? So, I mean, it's the let's allow it to be good what it's doing. And I think the technology piece and the immersive learning piece is part of that thought process. I've been teaching at the State Fire Academy for a very long period of time. And I've been fortunate in my career to be some tremendous fire instructors that have just imparted wisdom and knowledge and skills and just are phenomenal. And it's like they are and it's not taking anything away from them. It's like, okay, how do we take that phenomenal instructor and replicate them and make them accessible to everybody in the fire service or everybody in your corner of the fire service in a way that makes sense.

[22:34] Kevin Sofen: Well, it's like John, well, we have a summit to get back to [inaudible 22:37] Thank you Thanks for joining another episode of the Smart Firefighting podcast. We hope you learned something today and if so, please consider