Faster on the pump.

Hydrant overlays, rendezvous points, and risk data routed straight to the cab.

A Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service appliance, with the in-cab tablet visible through the open cab door

Fire and rescue is one of the harder routing problems in emergency services. Appliances are heavy and wide. A 26-tonne pump can’t transit every road a car can. Speed humps are the difference between a smooth arrival and a hard one when you’ve got crew and equipment on board. Hydrant locations matter from the moment you turn out, not when you arrive.

A Typical Emergency Response*
Call handling · 1m 24s 15%
Crew turnout · 1m 30s 17%
Measured. Audited. Optimised.
Drive to scene · 6 min 11 seconds 68%
Treated as a fixed cost. Increasing year on year.
*MHCLG, Detailed Analysis of Response Times to Fires, England — year ending March 2025 (FIRE1001).

Most services treat the drive to scene portion of total response time as fixed. Blue Light Maps was built to shrink it within those constraints. Blue Light Routing accounts for appliance dimensions and weight against the road’s real characteristics, not just the headline mapping data.

It also factors in the exemptions emergency vehicles can use, like bus lanes, restricted turns, and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, to find shorter routes that conventional mapping won’t surface. Hydrant overlays, hazmat and structural notes arrive as custom data layers drawn from your service’s own records, surfacing in the briefing pane while you’re en route rather than after you arrive.

Meanwhile, for multi-pump incidents a dispatcher drops an RVP and every responding crew sees it on the same map they navigate from, because shared overlays sync it to every device in real time.

Capabilities

Blue Light Routing

Developed alongside emergency crews, our routing algorithms understand what helps first responders get to scene quicker.

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Blue Light Alert®

We can pre-warn nearby drivers that a blue-light vehicle is approaching, so traffic reacts sooner and clears the path for emergency vehicles.

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Trusted data

The geospatial data your control room trusts, on the responder's map.

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Ready when you are

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Summary

Blue Light Maps offers a routing solution for fire and rescue services designed to reduce response times by accounting for vehicle dimensions, weight, and road characteristics. The platform integrates custom data layers such as hydrant locations and risk data, and enables real-time sharing of information like rendezvous points for multi-pump incidents. It also includes features like Blue Light Alert to pre-warn traffic of approaching emergency vehicles.

Key Facts

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the challenges for fire and rescue routing?

Appliances are heavy and wide, and a 26-tonne pump cannot transit every road a car can. Speed humps can also be a significant issue for arriving with crew and equipment on board.

How does Blue Light Routing address fire and rescue challenges?

Blue Light Routing accounts for appliance dimensions and weight against the road's real characteristics, and factors in exemptions emergency vehicles can use, like bus lanes, restricted turns, and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, to find shorter routes.

What custom data can be integrated with Blue Light Maps for fire services?

Hydrant overlays, hazmat and structural notes can be drawn from a service's own records and surfaced in the briefing pane while en route.

How does Blue Light Maps facilitate multi-pump incidents?

For multi-pump incidents, a dispatcher can drop a Rendezvous Point (RVP), and every responding crew sees it on the same map they navigate from, as shared overlays sync it to every device in real time.

Related Entities

Companies
Blue Light Maps, MHCLG
Products
Blue Light Routing, Blue Light Alert®
Locations
England
Technologies
mapping data