The purpose of this study was to determine the relationships among sensation seeking, burnout, injury, and job satisfaction among firefighters. Participants included 93 firefighters from a southeastern fire department. Each participant was asked to fill out a packet of self-report surveys including a demographic form, Sensation Seeking Scale Form V, Maslach Burnout Inventory, Job Satisfaction Survey, Absenteeism form, and an On-The-Job Injury form. This exploratory study provided an initial assessment of personality in relation to burnout and injuries in firefighters. The information from this study will hopefully help fire chiefs and administrators to better understand firefighters and the factors influencing their burnout, injuries, and job satisfaction. This information may, in turn, be useful in developing strategies to reduce burnout and better identify risk-factors affecting burnout and job performance in this population.

"Building design and site features have an influence on helping or hindering fire fighting operations. Traditional studies relating to building performance evaluation for fire department operations do not address the influence of building site and architectural design on local fire department suppression techniques. These studies also do not relate fire fighting analysis to anticipated fire size. The goal of this dissertation is to develop an analytical procedure by which the size of a specified design fire can be predicted for the time at which fire fighting attack water application is likely to occur. The delays encountered due to building configuration and specified design fire conditions are incorporated in the analysis. Discrete Event Simulation is used to compute time durations for fire fighting operations. The results of this dissertation may be used as a stand alone technical analysis for any office building or as a part of a more complete building performance evaluation. "

The Firefighter Process models the spread and defence of a fire using a simple graph. We consider the following discrete-time process: at t = 0 some vertex of the graph begins burning. At each subsequent step we may defend a vertex from burning and the fire spreads from all burning vertices to all undefended neighbours. We consider the related problems of maximising the number of saved vertices, protecting a specified set from burning and maximising the weight of the saved vertices. We close three open problems concerning these decision problems and their related optimisation problems using the notion of a strategy, the sequence of defended vertices. / Graduate

Volunteer firefighters make up almost 75% of the U.S. fire service. Fire service leaders face challenges in retaining volunteers, as evident by the 12% decline in volunteer firefighters since 1984. The purpose of the study was to explore what strategies fire service leaders have used to retain firefighters in the United States. The conceptual framework of this single case study was Freeman's stakeholder theory, which states that leaders can maximize the organization's performance by meeting the needs of those with a stake in the future of the organization. Face-to-face, seminstrucutred interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of 5 fire service leaders from Somerset County, New Jersey who had successfully implemented strategies for volunteer firefighter retention. Interview transcripts and supporting documents were explored using a modified Van Kaam model as a basis to analyze and create common themes for coding. Through methodological triangulation, 6 volunteer firefighter retention strategy themes emerged: a) schedule accommodations, (b) nonwage benefits, (c) opportunities for employee success, (d) recognition, (e) family, and (f) recruitment. From these 6 themes, 2 of the most successful retention strategies used by fire service leaders were identified as restructuring requirements for schedule accommodation and offering professional development. Specific recommendations from the research findings for retention include offering training, flexible scheduling, providing uniforms, family inclusion, and employee recognition. Implications for positive social change include offering strategies needed to improve the retention of volunteer firefighters, which may lead to the retention of public service employees to foster a high-quality workforce to serve the public

The purpose of this study was to determine the validity and reliability of an 8-flight tower climb test (TCT) to assess anaerobic performance in urban firefighters. Twenty-five professional urban firefighters participated in the validity testing of the TCT versus the Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAT) over 2 randomly sequenced testing sessions. Test-retest reliability was assessed separately in 21 active male and female participants over 2 TCT trials. During both validity and reliability testing for the TCT, participants ascended a firefighting training tower as fast as possible from a 1.7m running start while wearing firefighter protective equipment. Time was measured and power was calculated from the foot of the training tower to the top of the first (height = 1.75m) and eighth (height = 13.89m) flights of stairs. During the other session assessing TCT validity, participants completed a 30-second WAT using a resistance of 85gkg-1 body weight (BW). Several significant correlations were found including those between TCT power and: 1) mean WAT power generated for the duration equivalent to TCT time (r = 0.869), 2) peak power for the first 2 seconds of the WAT (r = 0.868), and 3) WAT peak power (r = 0.864). TCT test-retest performance in 21 active males and females showed that the test is highly reproducible. The mean time of completion of the 8-flight TCT was 21.81 + 5.03 seconds and 21.38 + 4.86 seconds for Trials 1 and 2, respectively. Intraclass correlations for time and power data from the first and eighth flights ranged from 0.94 to 0.99, and coefficients of variance ranged from 2.0% to 7.5%. These findings provide strong evidence that the TCT is a valid and reliable field-based assessment of occupation-specific anaerobic performance in urban firefighters. / Graduate

Firefighter is a discrete-time dynamic process that models the spread of a virus or rumour through a network. The name “Firefighter” arises from the initial analogy being the spread of fire among the vertices of a graph. Given a graph G, the process begins at time t = 0 when one or more vertices of G spontaneously “catch fire”. At each subsequent time step, a collection of b ≥ 1 “firefighters” defend a set of vertices which are not burning, and then the fire spreads from each burning vertex to all of its undefended neighbours. There are many possible objectives one could have, for example minimizing the expected number of vertices burned when the fire breaks out at a random location or locations, finding the maximum number of vertices that can be saved from burning if the fire breaks out at known locations, minimizing the length of the process, or bounding the proportion of vertices that can be saved from burning. It is also possible to consider multiple objectives that may be in conflict. There are a great number of papers in the literature which address these, and other, issues in terms of computational complexity, algorithms, approximation, asymptotics, heuristics, and more. The main purpose of this thesis is to survey developments on Firefighter and its variants which have appeared in the literature subsequent to a previous survey that appeared in 2009 [S. Finbow and G. MacGillivray. The firefighter problem: A survey of results, directions and questions. Australas. J. Comb., 43, 2009]. The thesis concludes with a list of open problems and future directions from the previous survey, annotated with references for papers that have made progress on those topics since then. / Graduate

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BEHIND THE FIRE LINEA thesis submitted in partial fulfillment for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, 2004. Major Director: Jim Long, Department Chair. Behind the Line of Fire is a documentary of the professional lives of a group of firefighters. Inspired by the events of September 11th, it has been an ongoing journey for me as I continue to interact with an photograph these individuals doing the job that they live for. My goal for this project has been to work within the guidelines of a documentary, a genre that has a rich, diverse, and defined history. I did not want to show scenes in which firefighters were depicted in typically iconographic scenarios. I have not made any images to date representing exploding structures with firefighters risking life and limb fighting the fire, nor have I shown the firefighters performing heroic acts such as rescuing a child or an animal. I believe the imagery I have created presents firefighters in a different light. These are men and women working. There are no hidden meanings or agendas involved. The photos are to be taken at face value as images of people whose lives revolve around what they do.

70 % of the worlds most expensive wildfireshas occurred since year 2003. This is a clear example of that wildfires arean increasingly growing problem which demands new solutions. Some of the most prominent problems of fighting wildfires are the harsh terrainand limited accessibility, the lack of communication and difficulties in creating an overview off the scene and predict how the wildfire will develop. These problems are all factors which I have tried to focus on in my degree project, the Trition. By doing thoroughly research about wildfires and by gathering information and inspiration from other areas, such as the military, it was possible to see the problems of wildfires in a more problem solving perspective. Ideas and forms were generated through unrestrictive sketching and created sketch models.The Trition is a terrain fire truck that serves as a response vehicle, with exceptionally good off-road mobility and that always can be first at the scene. The Trition also serves as a command central which can organise the enormous operations that big fires demands. By having a mobile and multifunctional command central it is possible to always have the latest data about the scene and plan the wildfire fighting in the most efficient way.The Trition is equipped with a drone on its roof. The drone can take off and sweep the area, collecting data which gives the firefighters a good overview and that help to predict the wildfire, such as wind speed and the terrain incline. The drone also has an important preventing function. By regularly sweeping inhabitant areas, the drones infrared camera can detect wildfires earlyon and alert the Trition for an early intervention.