INTERVIEW. Launched in 2004, the eBrigade web application has since been widely used by fire services and accredited civil protection organisations in France. Secours Info spoke to Nicolas Marche, the creator of this free tool, who is also a volunteer firefighter in Biot, in the Alpes-Maritimes, and a research and development (R&D) engineer at a company in Sophia Antipolis.
"I joined SDIS 06 in 2003. At the time, volunteers at my station had to enter their availability into an Excel spreadsheet, which could only be accessed from the fire station. I realised that in other stations, it was even more difficult, with paper forms that had to be filled in by hand. All of this made life difficult for the volunteer firefighters and, above all, for the person in charge of scheduling, who spent several days drawing up a rota." says Nicolas Marche regretfully.
"I immediately set about developing a web application, designed primarily to allow SPVs to enter their availability and to enable the duty manager to easily fill in a duty rota using the available staff"
An open-source project
The first version was finalised in 2004. The app quickly gained widespread approval within its own fire station, before attracting interest from all the neighbouring fire stations. "I turned the app into an open-source project on sourceforge.net, to make it easier to share. The project has been named ‘eBrigade’".
Whenever he can, he gives up his free time to help improve the project. "Every evening, for about an hour or two, and also when I’m on call, I use my spare time to carry on with the work. There’s usually a new version every six months, which introduces new features, bug fixes and technical or security improvements." he explains, adding that he regularly makes ergonomic improvements, "so that the app is easy to use on a smartphone or tablet". The technologies currently in use are simple and robust (PHP, MySQL, jQuery, Bootstrap).
Over 13,000 downloads
Since it was made available on SourceForge, the application has already been downloaded more than 13,000 times. In France, several hundred major fire stations use this free web application, such as the main fire and rescue centre in northern Perpignan.
eBrigade enables you to manage staff numbers, skills and availability, and to automatically generate fair rosters, whilst ensuring that the required skills and rest periods are taken into account.
Civil Defence: the largest user
"As far as I am aware, there are a few hundred emergency services centres that actively use the app, particularly in the south of France. However, another type of use has emerged since 2009. First-aid organisations also needed apps to manage their volunteers and operational activities (contingency plans).” he adds.
"The Civil Protection Agency, on the initiative of Éric Criscuolo, has been a pioneer in this field and uses eBrigade nationwide, with tens of thousands of members". The app also allows staff to be alerted quickly, by email and text message, based on their availability, location and skills.
An app suitable for all purposes
"To meet these needs, which differ slightly from those of the fire service, a large number of features have been added over time, such as geolocation, sending text messages, managing training and qualifications, and reporting… But rather than creating a new application, I preferred to keep the same source code, which provides a single application that can be configured to suit the needs of each organisation.".
"A large number of first-aid associations and local civil protection organisations in France, Belgium and Switzerland use eBrigade. Some trade unions also use eBrigade to manage their members’ subscriptions. More recently, members of the armed forces have started using eBrigade to manage army reserve units. The app is indeed well suited to this type of user, and new features relating to this will be included in the next version.".
A new version for the SDIS
"At the moment, I’m making improvements relating to usability and security, but there are always new features in the pipeline. In particular, I’m working on a new version capable of managing an entire fire and rescue service rather than just a single control centre."
"Non-French-speaking users regularly ask me for a version translated into other languages, but that would be a major undertaking. The app would indeed be very useful in developing countries where fire services are virtually non-existent or have no resources at their disposal."
How do I install eBrigade?
The app developed by Nicolas Marche is completely free, but installing it is still quite complicated. In fact, you need some basic knowledge of web hosting and databases to complete the installation successfully. Click here to download the app.
"I don’t have much time to provide user support, but if a genuine bug is found, users can always report it to me and I’ll fix it for the next version. If any eBrigade users would like to contribute to the development of the open-source project, they’re more than welcome to do so and can contact me."