Planning Fire and Rescue Services by Visualizing Mobile Phone Density

This paper focuses on how calculating and visualizing mobile phone density would assist fire and rescue services in Helsinki, Finland. Studying the relationship between population distributions (over time) and population density hot spots can lead to better emergency preparedness and the more efficient allocation of fire and rescue services. Current data are restricted to the administrative boundaries of census data and limited in their time dimension. Data acquired from mobile phone locations have a high temporal and spatial dimension and are better suited for the purpose of showing changing population density hotspots over time. Viewing population density as a continuous surface, using kernel density estimations, and visualizing it as a “landscape” can support the understanding of density distributions, which are of particular importance in the planning of fire and rescue services.