Fixing Kenya's Fire Service Click - Short Edition

as minus six.

Shortly, it'll be

time for Newswatch.

But first, here's Click.

On Click we often look out

for technology which can help

save people's lives.

For example, we went to Rwanda

to look at how drones were speeding

up deliveries of blood

and recently closer to home,

I looked at how the response times

of the air ambulance in London

were being improved

by better connectivity.

If you live in the developed world,

you'll probably take it for granted

that you can dial the emergency

number, someone will answer

and help will arrive.

Well, in Kenya, that's not the case.

In the capital Nairobi alone,

there are more than 50 different

numbers for different ambulance

services and if you need a fire

engine, well, that's

at least a dozen more,

and even then there is no guarantee

they'll be able to get to you.

Well, Kate Russell has been to meet

a couple of entrepreneurs who have

had the great idea of amalgamating

them all into one service.

Think Uber for emergency services.

For most living in a modern

metropolis, calling an ambulance

involves dialling

a single short code.

But in a city more than 6 million

people, Nairobi has no functioning

central emergency number.

With five public hospitals

and dozens of private hospitals

and clinics all operating

independently, you have to know

who to call if you need an ambulance

here and hope there's someone

on duty to pick up.

Caitlin and Maria run

a start-up in Nairobi hoping

to address this problem.

You just take for granted that 911

exists and we did as well,

both of us had lived here for years

and we never even considered it

and we'd worked in health

and I never even thought

what I would do in an emergency.

We just started asking people,

have you seen an ambulance before?

Who has an ambulance?

We would go and meet and find

ambulances in parking lots

and we started a really simple tally

of how many ambulances

we could find.

We realised there were so many

ambulances and nobody has any idea

where they are.

Flare's aim is to connect emergency

response vehicles on an Uber-style

platform that can route calls

to an operator that can

get their quickest.

-- get there quickest.

When the call comes in I get to know

the patient's location,

I click on the location.

We can see all the vehicles that

are within my range.

I can select the ambulance service,

which is six minutes away.

Let's click on the ambulance service

I'm going to dispatch,

it gives me the contact

number and their location

and the estimated time.

It also gives me the

direction route for them.

Leah!

Emergency!

A busy city hospital,

we left Patrick to his work

and headed out onto the streets

to see first-hand the traffic

problems that make this kind

of operator routeing a lifesaver.

This was especially important

when violence broke out

during the October elections.

Flare's ambulances were 33% busier

attending to emergencies

in these hotspots.

The response times we've seen have

gone down from 162 minutes,

which is the average,

which is nearly three hours,

which is insane, to

about 15-20 minutes.

So far, the platform has

30 ambulances online,

with a goal to reach at least 50

by the end of January next year.

An annual membership fee gives

patients access to the emergency

hotline and covers the cost of any

callouts, which otherwise would have

had to be paid by credit card before

an ambulance is dispatched.

The fee is currently around $15-$20

but Flare say this might change

as the service matures.

Eventually, Flare wants to add more

concierge-style features

for its members, like real-time

updates and treatment information.

The data being collected might also

prove useful to help co-ordinate

better service across the city.

One of the things we recently

learned is there's a lack

of ambulances between 7am

and 9am and the reason

for that is that the night team

is handing over to the day team,

so all providers are doing that

shift change, so there's a delay

in that happening so then

there aren't enough ambulances

online to respond

to the emergencies.

Fire means even bigger problems

for emergency callouts in Nairobi.

As well as the fractured

co-ordination issues seen

with ambulances, there

is a desperate shortage of both

trucks and water supplies.

Tragedies like this in Nairobi's

vast clothes market Gikomba

are all too common and often left

burning for much longer

than they should be

because of a simple lack

of access to resources.

999 goes directly to

the police headquarters,

the police control room.

Once you call the police control

room, they start looking

for the nearest ambulance service

or the nearest fire service.

There's no radio linkage anywhere.

The phones they have

belong to individuals.

The fire and ambulance service

are controlled separately

by different players.

ICT Fire and Rescue is the first

firefighting school

of its kind in Kenya.

I went to visit them and got

to try out some training.

Flare is working with the school

to add as many firetrucks

as possible to their Nairobi

coverage, as well as locating

available public and private water

supplies to add to the map.

There are enough hydrants

in Nairobi theoretically,

they were planned for,

but a lot of the hydrants have been

built on top of, so we're

surveying Nairobi to see

where there are publicly available

hydrants and where their private

hydrants are that we can

actually tap into.

At this stage, it's unclear how

the membership funding model

will play out for fire cover

as callout costs could be radically

higher and more variable

than ambulance work.

Flare has high hopes of becoming

the 911 call equivalent

for the whole of

Kenya in the future.

HotStepper is a wayfinding app that

uses this scantily clad character

to guide you to your

designated destination.

It is doing so by combining AR,

geolocation data, and mapping,

and while it's not the only app

to overlay directions on the real

world, it certainly has

its unique character.

He's just doing a dance for some

people that are walking

past the pub.

You must be Luke.

Hiya.

Lara, good to meet you.

You too.

So why am I following

this man around?

Why have you designed

him looking like this?

After the year we have had in 2017,

I think we all needed some humour

so it just makes it more

interesting to get from A to B.

There are a lot of

navigation apps out there.

Why are people going

to choose this one?

Some people find maps

on their phones quite

complicated to use.

We have also put in gigantic 3-D

arrows at the end of the road

so you can follow him and can

you also see from the arrows

where you want to go.

There are some challenges -

we don't actually know where a road

begins and a pavement stops,

so we have to kind of do our best

to calculate where we think that is.

To make it look as believable

as possible, what we're doing

is try to find out where we think

you are, what the weather

is like where you are,

so if it's a sunny day or a cloudy

day, and then specifically

the location of the sun.

And if we can work out where the sun

is, we can then render his shadow

naturally to where to should be.

But when you're not having fun

on foot, then maybe you're trying

to find a place to leave your car.

Well, AR measuring app AirMeasure

are prototyping a function to help

you parallel park -

not something you would want

any inaccuracy on.

In the meantime, the app can be used

for measuring furniture,

creating a floor plan,

or seeing how tall you are.

But if you are more focused

on finding your way around and have

taken a shine to HotStepper,

just don't lose your friend

or you might lose your way.

OK, you cannot miss that arrow

but where has my man gone?

Where is he?

When James Bond used a jet pack

to escape the bad guys

in Thunderball, the world

went jet pack mad.

But the US military-designed

Bell Rocket Belt that he used

was later scrapped due to its high

price and limited flight time.

Almost 60 years on, science fiction

is finally becoming science fact.

Several companies, and even

individuals around the world,

have taken to the skies in recent

years to show off their versions

of a jet pack.

And recently, I was invited

to strap myself into one.

Fortunately, this was only in VR.

OK, here we go.

We are going to go up.

OK!

The real thing has been built

and tested by New Zealand company

Martin Aircraft, which has now been

bought by the KuangChi Science

company in China.

First things first -

technically, it isn't a jet pack.

It lifts off using two ducted

fans which are powered

by a petrol engine.

It is still in testing but the team

hopes that by the time it is ready,

it will be able to fly as fast as 40

kilometres an hour at an altitude

of 2,500 feet.

On a single tank, it should last

for about 30 minutes covering

distances of 20 kilometres,

carrying about 100 kilos.

And KuangChi says it will be used

for far more than just fulfilling

the dream of human flight.

TRANSLATION:

What can we do

if there are people stranded

in a high-rise fire?

This jet pack can reach places

where a helicopter cannot.

A helicopter requires space

but with a jet pack,

you can get very near

and hose the fire down.

Martin Aircraft has been developing

flight technology for over three

decades and previously thought it

would start selling these

by last year.

Now, the company hopes the Chinese

financial boost will finally be

enough to get it off the ground.

Back at my VR demo, I am starting

to realise I may not be the ideal

jet pack pilot.

Yes, that's quite enough for now.

The full-length version it up on

iPlayer.

Thanks for watching

and we will see you soon.