Saving lives with data Peter Bradley, Staff Officer (Special Projects) in the RNLI Operations department, reveals how complex 'number crunching' underpins a successful lifesaving service Each issue of the Lifeboat includes detailed coverage of a handful of rescues, but what of the wider picture? Launching lifeboats over 7,000 times each year and attending more than 3,000 beach incidents with lifeguards is no easy task and each incident must be carefully recorded to help with planning for the next.

Every service call out, whether lifeboat or lifeguard attended, is entered on the RNLI headquarters databases and the Listings section of this magazine reveals the tip of this iceberg.

The sort of data recorded includes the type of casualty, what difficulties they were in, their geographical position and what the outcome - was.

The story does not end there - since 1997 the RNLI has hosted a national database that collects information from all the rescue providers in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland. From this database, each rescue agency can see the full picture of incidents up to 100 miles off the coast.

We also have an interest in water safety and prevention campaigns generally through membership of the National Water Safety Committee of the Royal Society for Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). Through a joint project with RoSPA, a new database has been created to record incidents on inland waters. Again, this is a national multi-agency database that will inform the RNLI, RoSPA and inland rescue services such as Fire, Police and Ambulance of the overall trends of accidents happening on inland waters and the responses to them.

It is my job to review and integrate our existing databases so that we can gain the most benefit from them. So what happens with all of the information that is collected? It is a key tool for strategic planning, all in the aid of saving life. It helps to identify 'hot spots' of activity and thus inform decisions as to what type of boat is needed at each lifeboat station.

Information is also used to proactively target those sea users who show the most potential for accidents. For example, there have already been highly successful campaigns to reduce machinery failure, a new Fish Safety campaign has started in earnest and many shore-based safety presentations and demonstrations have been instigated, all designed to stem developing patterns and trends highlighted by the incident database.

The RNLI's media relations, supporter marketing, and publications teams also make great use of incident data, to assist in raising awareness of the service and to generate support for us now and into the future.

The summer 2004 issue of the Lifeboat will feature statistics for 2003 for the whole of the RNLI's operations but I can give a preview here of one area of our work. The pie chart shows what activities people were engaged in prior to needing RNLI Beach Lifeguard help. A selection of related facts, some derived from combining this with other types of data, are noted alongside.

All that remains to be said to everyone reading this article is: try not to become a casuality statistic yourself, by following the advice of our Sea Safety department and our colleagues in other rescue and safety agencies.Beach Lifeguarding statistics What were people doing when they needed assistance? 63% of the surfing incidents occurred in Carrick 39% of inflatable users assisted were blown out to sea by offshore winds 33% of swimming incidents also involved groynes on Bournemouth and Poole beaches 51% of the swimmers involved were caught in rip currents compared with 54% of the body boarders Also see pages 31 and 33.