Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service has recently embarked on a project to explore the potential use of Camera phones in various projects. The aim is to introduce camera phones in projects with young people. Ahead of that, a pilot project is testing the feasibility of introducing new gadgets to Fire Support Network Volunteers. A group of volunteers has been out and about in the community taking pictures and saving them online. So far so good, we’re exploring how they can be used to record the work of volunteers, to record fire hazards (and potential hazards), and to record Fire Safety events and promotional projects.

Pilot project…
Following initial feedback from the group of volunteers we are focusing the pilot on recording the work of the Fire Support Network. The next photos we will gather will be a series of community based events and, once captured, these pictures may be used in promotional activity. We will be using the camera phones as a simple mechanism to capture the work of the volunteers and their activities within local communities.

Technology…
Many phones now come with cameras, so it was easy to decide to use Nokia 6233 handsets which are pretty easy to use as phones and as cameras. We also needed to create some sort of image capture system; preferably online. Our solution came in the form of Flickr.com the popular photo sharing website. We are sending images from the phones to Flickr via email (MMS message), and then we’re using Flickr to manage them. Flickr lets us do all sorts of things such as add notes, create albums, and then obviously to publish them. Of course, using Flickr and MMS / email and 6233 handsets means we’re able to run a pilot project at relatively low cost. The project is testing how this technology can be used, rather than testing the technology itself.

Sharing…
More information on the pilot will be made available here, and eventually we will make some of these images public using Flickr; and here on the blog. Our Camera Action images are currently private whilst we all get to grips with the project, but we are sharing other images from the wider programme on Flickr on the “OurOpenSpace” Flickr page here.

More on this soon!