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 inSweden has conducted over 60 000 fire-prevention homevisits. On-duty fire fighters have gone door-to-door informing 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 incidentswith fatal outcomes as well as to improve the level of civil trust. In spite the vast resources spent and large coverage, the number of residential fires has only decreased marginally and the number of fatal incidents has in fact increased inthe 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 thespatial differences and analyze if a high number of homevisits can be correlated to decreased numbers of residentialfires in some areas and conversely, to increased numbersin others. Through geostatistical methods, the area-basedresiduals are analyzed in order to first measure the effectsof the campaign and second to determine which additionalarea-based factors that might influence the frequency