Effects of Door-to-door Fire-prevention information on reducing the occurrence of Residential Fires in Southern Sweden

Since 2010, the Region South Fire and Rescue Service in Sweden has conducted over 60 000 fire-prevention home visits. On-duty fire fighters have gone door-to-door in-forming residents about general safety procedures in case of a fire. The aim of this ongoing education campaign is to reduce the number of residential structure fires and incidents with fatal outcomes as well as to improve the level of civil trust. In spite the vast resources spent and large cohort coverage, the number of residential fires has only decreased marginally and the number of fatal incidents has in fact increased in the entire operational district. When looking at the effects spatially, on subarea level within the operational district, the results diverge. This could imply that the education campaign might be targeted inefficiently in terms of space. The aim of this paper is to map the spatial differences and analyze if a high number of home visits can be correlated to decreased numbers of residential fires in some areas and conversely, to increased numbers in others. Through geostatistical methods, the area-based residuals are analyzed in order to first measure the effects of the campaign and second to determine which additional area-based factors that might influence the frequency.