Addressing firefighter safety concerns: Martin Joosen shares insights into advanced training methods and the future of robotic firefighting
Iain Hoey
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By Martin Joosen, Senior Vice President/Managing Director, LION EMEA
The fire and safety industry faces ongoing challenges that demand continuous adaptation.
One of the major concerns for fire brigades is adapting to advancements that present new problems that didn’t exist before, like electric vehicles and highly secure buildings that are difficult to enter.
They need to continuously seek new technologies and updated training to help them address these issues.
From a health and safety perspective, there are risks around toxic particles in black smoke, which contribute to high cancer rates among firefighters.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) is crucial for their protection, but contamination of this equipment is also a challenge.
More rules and regulations are emerging to ensure they are not exposed to harmful particles.
LION Protects is in the business of the training of firefighters, where all these challenges converge.
The real-life challenges need to be incorporated into training environments to prepare firefighters effectively. We see two developments here.
First, as specialists in building training facilities, we aim to provide them with the latest technology for training.
For example, how do you extinguish fires in electric vehicles? We are developing tools and vehicles to enable them to train on procedures specific to electric vehicles compared to traditional ones.
Second, there’s the issue of decontamination. Firefighters are not frequently exposed to real fires due to safety systems and building practices, especially in Europe.
However, in training environments, they are exposed to real fires more often.
While contamination and black smoke are dangerous, they’re not frequently encountered in real situations, but they are in training.
This is where our NFT program comes in.
By combining the three elements of fire systems – carbonaceous, gas, and digital – we can reduce exposure while still providing 100% effective training with fewer toxic particles, less environmental impact like CO₂ emissions, and better total cost of ownership.
In many industries, human beings are reaching the end of their technological involvement in certain tasks – why would we send real people into a fire when we could use robots in the future? Drones have been developed that can extinguish fires from the outside of a building.
While there are limitations, I foresee a future where firefighters are increasingly replaced – not in terms of their knowledge, but in terms of the physical human presence.
We will always have fires to contend with. We will always need firefighters to some extent, but their roles will evolve.
About the IFSJ Influencer
Martin Joosen joined LION in 2018 leading the Sales and Marketing department.
He is responsible for Europe, Asia, Middle-East and Pacific.
He studied at the Erasmus University and Nyenrode University with a master’s in management and economics.
He has more than 20 Years experience in International Business, 17 of which are in the Fire Rescue Market, and more than 5 years experience in international projects.
He is now the Senior Vice President/Managing Director, LION EMEA.
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