Mapping the response: A survey of municipal firefighter navigation training and practices in the United States

How do first responders successfully arrive to all the unique addresses they are called to for emergencies? This work investigates how firefighters are trained to navigate their response areas through the development of cognitive maps. It also seeks to understand what navigation tools are available to ensure successful navigation, and how firefighters use these tools. Using an online survey, we collected training, navigational aid, and demographic data from over 200 firefighters across North America. Our mixed-methods analysis identified that firefighter navigation training is predominantly carried out informally. Firefighters use a variety of navigation tools to supplement their cognitive maps, including generic aids such as Google Maps, as well as fire service specific aids such as runbooks or software applications. Redundancy within navigation aids was important, with most participants having access to technology and non-technology navigational tools. These results expand our understanding of professional navigators in the particularly rich and important context of firefighting, provide additional insight on navigation under time stress, and create an opportunity to refine navigation training curricula for first responders. • Firefighters develop detailed cognitive maps of their response areas, beyond routing. • Firefighter navigation training is a patchwork of practices sharing common themes. • A standardized curriculum on navigation is missing from current firefighter training. • To provide redundancy to their cognitive maps, they rely on a variety of spatial aids. • Firefighters create their own navigation aids, games, and spatial learning tactics.