In the realm of emergency services, data plays a crucial role in understanding trends, improving response strategies, and ultimately saving lives. One significant source of data in the United States is the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). NFIRS collects and disseminates information on fire, arson, wildland fire, EMS, hazmat, and casualty incidents. Over the years, the format of NFIRS public data release has evolved to meet the changing needs of stakeholders.

1980 - 1998

The first NFIRS public data release. Data formatted in DBF. Some corruption and character encoding issues in data. Difficult to convert into a modern-day relational database format.

1999 - 2001

A major update to the NFIRS public data release format. Includes EMS incidents.

Update Summary

• Zip code fields changed from Numeric to Text.
• Corrected issue of data overflow between records.
• Removed NFIRS 4.1 mutual aid given incidents.
• Cleaned up invalid records and added new data year 1999 incidents.
• Corrected NFIRS Version 4.1 to Version 5.0 conversion errors.
• Detailed code changes in Basic Module, Fire Module, Civilian Fire Casualty Module, and Firefighter Casualty Module.
• Corrected 3,500 duplicate incidents found in Connecticut state data.
• Corrected Resource count data in Basicincident.dbf table.
• Modified Fireincident.dbf table to repair incorrect designations.
• Updated Fdheader.dbf to remove corrupted FD Header records.
• Repaired Version 4.1 Heat Source codes and converted inconsistent Version values to "5.0".
• Corrected NFIRS Version 4.1 to Version 5.0 conversion errors.
• Removed incidents with duplicate master keys.

2002 - 2011

Separates incident addresses into its own table.

Update Summary

• NFIRS Structure Fire Cause codes included in new table "causes11.dbf".
• Documentation provided in "fire_cause_categories.pdf".
• EMS table contains only EMS associated with fires or hazardous conditions.
• NFIRS PDR schema changed starting with the 2002 release; BasicIncident.dbf split into two tables, with incident address information in IncidentAddress.dbf.

2012

DBF file format is changed to TXT.

Update Summary

• Format Change: NFIRS PDR file format transitioned from dbase table files to delimited text files (essentially CSV files).
• Fields separated by the "^" character, and text fields encoded by double quotes.
• Can be opened directly in MS Excel, but data truncation may occur if row count exceeds Excel's limitation.
• Format of tables and data fields remains consistent with previous releases.
• Fields organized for ease of data analysis, especially those designated as "enter as many as apply".
• Values organized in designated fields, with "1" representing the first field, "2" the second, and so on.
• If value is "None", it goes into the first field and others are left blank/null.
• NFIRS Structure Fire Cause codes included in new table "causes.txt".
• Guide for analyzing NFIRS data included in "NFIRS 5.0 Fire Data Analysis Guidelines and Issues.pdf".
• Only fire and hazardous conditions incidents included in data tables.
• EMS table contains only EMS incidents associated with fires or hazardous conditions.
• NFIRS PDR schema change initiated starting with the 2002 release; BasicIncident table split into two tables, with incident address information now in IncidentAddress.

2013 - 2018

No major schema changes.

Update Summary

• Format Change: Transitioned NFIRS PDR file format from dbase table files to delimited text files (CSV).
• Fields separated by "^", text fields encoded with double quotes.
• Compatible with most database and statistical tools.
• NFIRS Structure Fire Cause codes included as "causes.txt".

2019 - Present

EMS is changed from 1-to-1 to 1-to-many. Causes is added. INCIDENT_KEY column is created as the primary key.