How to Compare Apples and Oranges?

By   July 1, 2016
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How can we compare apples and oranges? The NEXES Action needs to overcome this proverbial challenge. NEXES aims to assess the impact of her solutions for Internet-enabled communication technologies on emergency services throughout Europe and even beyond Europe. Emergency services are quite different, due to their location and organisation. How to assess any impact given very different subjects?

This is the first article in a series of six about the NEXES Key Performance Indicators. NEXES is a Research and Innovation Action about NEXt generation Emergency Services. Quoted from the NEXES website: “The NEXES Research and Innovation Action aims to research, test and validate the promising integration of IP-based communication technologies and interoperability within the next generation emergency services, so that they attain increased effectiveness and performance.”


 

Emergency services comprise fire brigades, police organisations, ambulance services and possibly other search and rescue organizations: services provided by the government for the protection, safety and security of its citizens. We, the citizens, can call emergency services, usually via 112, 911 or another standard telephone number. This works for any telephone apparatus: old and new, mobile and landline. Yet, given the current abundance of new mobile communications devices (smartphones, tablets, laptops), why not use the new capabilities of these devices to communicate with emergency services?

This is precisely the aim of the NEXES Action. The idea behind NEXES is to provide Internet-enabled communication technologies that are commonplace for citizens and show how these can be integrated into emergency services’ daily operations. As a result, citizens can use total conversation, which includes interactive chat, video calling, calling over Wifi (e.g. through VOIP: voice of internet protocol technology), providing accurate GPS location from their mobile device, providing up to date emergency information, and being informed with relevant information.


 

Another lofty NEXES goal is to make it easier for citizens to call emergency services. This includes citizens experiencing impairments, including not being able to speak or hear (either temporarily or permanently) or non-native speakers such as tourists and immigrants. Furthermore, citizens located deep in buildings may have problems using normal mobile phones, yet can still contact emergency services by using VOIP (telephone using the internet, e.g. via Wifi).

So where is the challenge in comparing apples and oranges? This is directly related to emergency services: those are our apples and oranges. Emergency services can be rather different in their organisation, resources and objectives. Emergency services situated in a city have goals such as an ambulance must arrive at the incident location within 10 minutes of calling. Emergency services situated in the countryside may have different goals, perhaps an arrival time of 20 minutes is required. Each country, within Europe and beyond, has a similar, yet different culture and organisation of its emergency services.

Emergency services that adopt new communication capabilities change. An emergency service may first appear as an ‘apple’, and after the change appear to be an ‘orange’. This is akin to an apple orchard expanding and including oranges. Part of the puzzle in comparing ‘apples and oranges’ is being able to compare a ‘previous’ and ‘current’ emergency service. Thus, one emergency service must be able to compare itself: before (‘an apple’) and after a change (‘an orange’).

These differences among emergency services are a challenge for NEXES. NEXES strives to provide a set of key performance indicators – that is, evaluations of the performance – of emergency services that are about the results of Internet-enabled communication technologies. These key performance indicators must assess ‘the impact’ of using the new communication possibilities.

And that’s where the challenge lies. How to assess the impact of the new communication possibilities, if the ‘subjects’ are similar, yet different? How to assess ‘before’ and ‘after’ the adoption of new communication possibilities, and evaluate the gains? Related to the earlier example on ambulance arrival time: what if the arrival time becomes 11 minutes, by using the new communication capabilities? Is that better, or worse? For an emergency service within a city, this is worse performance. For an emergency service in the countryside, this may be a better performance.

How can key performance indicators help? The next article explains how not to use key performance indicators when you wish to compare apples and oranges.

Blog 1 of 6This blog is number 1 in a series of six articles on the NEXES Key Performance Indicators and Effect Measurements. When you wish to delve deeper into the NEXES Action and its solution to comparing apples and oranges we recommend to read the deliverable D2.4. Below is the list of all the articles in the series:

Photo of Niek Wijngaards. Dr. Niek Wijngaards works for AIMTech Consulting Limited in the United Kingdom and True Information Solutions in the Netherlands as senior consultant and solution architect. His focus on user-centered innovation and his work on intelligent systems and scenario-based robust decision-making provides a sound basis for the development of the NEXES flexible KPI structure, making it possible to rigorously compare apples, oranges and indeed the entire contents of a fruit basket. Niek can be contacted at n.wijngaards AT aimtech DOT co DOT uk for KPI and fruit-related questions.


EC FlagNEXES action logo Copyright © 2016, NEXES RIA, All Rights Reserved. The NEXES Research and Innovation Action has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 653337. The work on the NEXES Key Performance Indicators is co-authored by the Action partners and has benefited from the constructive comments by the reviewers. See the NEXES LinkedIn group LinkedIn Logo for an overview of NEXES colleagues. All images Copyright © NEXES unless stated otherwise.