Methodology of Threat Assessment of Municipalities and Districts

Aim: The aim of the article is to discuss theoretical and practical aspects of the emergence and use of the method of assessment of threat occurring in areas of particular municipalities and districts in the activities of organizational units of the State Fire Service. One of the reasons for returning to this topic is the modification of the method finalized last year, in order to include within it another factor of fire danger, which are non-forest terrestrial ecosystems. Moreover, updates in this area have been made to allow those who have not previously had the opportunity to learn about the subject matter. Introduction: Last year, a new regulation of the Minister of Internal Affairs and Administration of 17 September 2021 on the detailed organization of the national rescue and firefighting system (Polish Journal of Laws: Dz.U. 2021 poz. 1737) came into force. In relation to the content of the previously existing regulation, it has changed the methodology on how to assess the risks that may occur on the area of the district and the province, in which the analysis is subject to risk factors occurring respectively in the areas of individual municipalities, making their subsequent aggregation at the level of the districts. Taking into account the fact that it has been ten years since the original inclusion of this tool in the regulations on the functioning of the national rescue and firefighting system (KSRG), it is considered a good moment to share with the readers some of the author’s reflections on both theoretical and practical aspects of its creation and application in the activities of organizational units of the State Fire Service. Methodology: The paper uses the results of the author’s own work in creating the aforementioned hazard assessment method, based on the theoretical foundation of hazard analysis and risk assessment. Fire experience was also used, including data analysis of incidents that occurred. Conclusions: As a result of the carried out work, a method of assessment of hazards occurring in individual municipalities and districts was created, implemented in 2011, used for the preparation and annual update of district and provincial rescue plans. In practice, its results are directly applicable in the process of determining standards of additional equipment for district and city fire stations of the State Fire Service, requirements for the organization of specialized rescue groups and methodology of building a plan for the network of volunteer fire departments to be included in the national and rescue firefighting system. Ten years of using this method and its recent extension with a new risk factor are the reasons to formulate the thesis that it has been positively verified in terms of practical usefulness of its results. There is also a possibility of its further improvement, e.g. in the context of introducing additional tools that could increase the quality of the obtained results, e.g. enabling its stronger connection with currently available geospatial databases.

Particularly noteworthy is the provision of §5 sec. 1 point 1of this regulation, which stipulated that the development of the aforementioned plans is preceded by an "analysis of the hazards existing in a given area, taking into account the density of population, geographical and topographic conditions, state of infrastructure and hazards from neighbouring areas, including areas covered by SFT VOL. 59 ISSUE 1, 2022, PP. 142-156 w tym terenów objętych prawem górniczym, poligonów, wód przybrzeżnych oraz terenów państw ościennych" [3].
With such vague guidelines, the analyses prepared at that time were characterized by great diversity, and the obtained results were often difficult to compare. Consequently, their practical usefulness in the context of use for operational planning was also limited.
Recognizing these shortcomings, within the framework of the amendment of the regulations mentioned above concerning the functioning of KSRG, an attempt has been made to create a method of assessment of the threats mentioned above, which would allow to identify them in a more precise and systematized way as well as to assess the potential that accompanies the occurrence of each of them. As a result of the analysis of the palette of approaches to the issue of threat assessment, or, more broadly, risk assessment [4][5][6] characterized in literature, taking into account the specificity of the expected use of the results of the assessment in question, it was decided to propose a method in the form of an index [7]. Within its framework, firefighting experience was used, both in the area of control and reconnaissance, as well as operational and rescue activities. Therefore, in this case we can also speak of a method based on a deterministic approach to the analysed and evaluated phenomena.
The work began with the identification of the most important threat factors that affect, among others, the needs for equipment and issues of appropriate operational and tactical preparation of fire protection units. It was then proposed to define qualitative-quantitative criteria that would allow their quantification and grading. As a result, the process originally evaluated sixteen (now seventeen) of these risk factors: fifteen that relate explicitly to population, certain types of facilities or sites, and their characteristics; and one that provides an opportunity to consider the degree of risk from other risk factors not explicitly identified that are specific to the evaluated area. As mentioned in the introduction, the analytical works of several years were finalized in 2011, in the content

Degrees of threats
At the outset, it is assumed that in this method the magnitude of the threat will be expressed on a five-point scale using the following ranks:

Spreadsheets
The key findings in terms of the degrees of threat listed above are formulated in spreadsheets dedicated for this purpose, relating to the areas of individual municipalities and districts. For large cities, it is possible to produce sheets separately for each of the neighbourhoods.
As far as the structure of the basic sheet, which refers to the threats occurring in a municipality or a city neighbourhood, its Obviously, when using terms related to the mentioned height of buildings, formal definitions included in technical and construction regulations were used [8].
At the same time, the text of the regulations indicates that the classification to the threat level is made not only on the basis of the criteria indicated in the sheet, but also taking into account local conditions, including the number and size of events corresponding to the individual threat factors. This leaves a certain amount of discretion to the evaluators, given that the determinations in question will be made primarily by experienced firefighters from district and city fire stations of the State Fire Department. These people will be able to make the final classification of a given factor into a specific level of threat also using the experience mentioned above, on the basis of the so-called professional judgement, known from the already cited literature on the subject. Practice has confirmed that said judgment has played and continues to play an important positive role in the process under consideration.
At this point it should be noted that in case of ensuring the criterion of comparability of the assessments made, discussing their results during staff meetings at the level of provincial HQs of the PSP turned out to be a good practice. During the deliberations, if it was noted that there was too much disparity in a given assessment compared to assessments in other districts, it was usually adjusted by consensus, in consultation with the author.
The form and content of a spreadsheet for a district is shown in Table 1. As already mentioned, the spreadsheets prepared for individual municipalities and districts are a key component of the methodology presented in this paper. It can be stated that the information collected in them constitutes a kind of a set of metadata, which can be later and are in practice used for the purposes of various detailed (partial) analyses. As mentioned in the introduction, examples of such application will be discussed later in this paper.

Threat criteria (factors)
While creating a catalogue of threat factors that will be subject to analysis and evaluation, an attempt was made to include those that significantly affect the needs for operational and technical preparedness of KSRG units. Therefore, in this catalogue, in addition to issues relating to the number of residents, there are also objects and areas whose construction, purpose and method of use makes it necessary to ensure readiness to take specialized actions related to combating the effects of fires, including fires in residential buildings, public buildings, factories and forest Threat criterion (factor) / Kryterium (czynnik) zagrożenia  As a consequence of the above changes, a total of 17 threat factors are included in the current spreadsheet (see Table 1).

Threat indicators and accident threat rates of municipalities and districts
In the preceding paragraphs, the essential part of the considered methodology of threat assessment of municipalities and districts was discussed, i.e. the threat factors under assessment and the way of grading their potential. On the other hand, this part of the article will introduce the uncomplicated calculation part, which enables to determine the accidental degrees of threat of municipalities and districts. In terms of severity (see Table 2), a simple relationship was assumed that it is inversely proportional to the magnitude of the threat. According to this principle, one threat factor classified for instance as Z V is balanced by five factors classified as Z I .
do stopnia Z V jest równoważony przez pięć czynników zakwalifikowanych do stopnia Z I .  The H G determined in this manner is then the basis for determining the municipality's accident threat rate (from Z IG to Z VG ).

Degree of threat / Stopień zagrożenia Value of base number L Bi / Wartość liczby bazowej L Bi
This is done using the data presented in Table 3. The accident threat rate for the district is determined in a similar manner. In this case, the relationship determining the H P district threat rate is determined by:

Ranges of values of the H G threat index of a municipality /
The individual components mean: The accident threat rate of a district is determined according to the value of the district threat index, as shown in Table 4.

Presentation of results
Annex no. 1 to the regulation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration [2], which has been mentioned many times, also defines the way of presenting the results of the evaluation mentioned above in the district and voivodeship rescue plans.
One of them is a graphic form, which boils down to the prepara-  In each of the groups mentioned above, the considered standard of additional equipment (within the scope of providing additional fire vehicles, fire pumps, water-foam cannons, contaminated water pumps, jump-ropes, protective clothing, foam agent reserves and others) is differentiated depending on the so-called normative (symbols NII and NII). One of the bases for setting the normative is the just discussed threat assessment.
SFT VOL. 59 ISSUE 1, 2022, PP. 142-156 To be more precise, the normative level (from NI to NIII) is determined on the basis of the 5 x 5 matrix, where on one axis the degrees of the threat of the district are mapped (from Z I to Z V ) according to the threat criteria (factors) determining the specific needs for a given type of rescue.
In this case, each type of threat is assigned an appropriate degree of that threat, which is the resultant (calculated using equations constructed on the same principles as discussed above), The analytical mechanism discussed above is also used for be preceded by an analysis of threats and operational security in the protected area, referred to in the current regulation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Administration on detailed organization of KSRG. One more example of practical use of the presented methodology of threat assessment is its application in the process of building a plan of a network of volunteer fire departments, planned to be included into the national rescue and firefighting system [11].