Modeling of residential structure fire response: Exploring the hyper-project

Emergency service systems such as community fire departments respond to and resolve unplanned events within a given service area. A review of the literature addressing such systems indicates that existing research is almost exclusively focused on higher level planning issues such as facility location and resource allocation. In contrast, this study addresses the operational level of such a system, an existing fire department's response to residential structure fire. Such a response exhibits many of the elements of traditional project management, such as distinctly defined tasks and significant predecessor relationships. However, the defining characteristic of these projects is not simply expediency, but the fact that the structure of the project can change if the preceding project structure does not complete some aspect of its task sequence within an interval of time dictated by some external pacing function. What emerges is a unique and intriguing class of project, dubbed the hyper-project in this study. The concept of the hyper-project is discussed both in its general form and with respect to the aforementioned case study example. Readily transferable to non-emergency applications, the hyper-project typifies and unites a heretofore unrecognized family of operations, highlighting the opportunities for future research.