The initiative will unite researchers, fire departments and advanced technology to turn fragmented data into actionable insights.

Firefighters routinely work under conditions that push the human body to its limits. They battle extreme heat, lift heavy equipment, work irregular hours and respond to emergencies where lives can depend on their physical and mental readiness.

Researchers at East Texas A&M University are helping lead an ambitious new effort to better understand those demands—and turn decades of firefighter health and performance data into information that could help firefighters lead safer, healthier and longer careers.

Dr. Michael Oldham, assistant professor in ETAMU's Department of Health and Human Performance and director of the university's ROARHP Lab, is leading the establishment of the Fire Data Consortium, a multi-institutional collaboration supported by a $100,000 Research Enhancement Fund (REF) award from The Texas A&M University System.

The consortium will create a secure, centralized repository where firefighter research data from universities, fire departments and other organizations can eventually be combined and analyzed. The main goal is to make firefighting safer.

“We want to make sure that firefighters are able to walk off the job instead of limp off the job,” Oldham said.

Strength in numbers

Firefighter research is already being conducted across Texas and the nation, but individual studies may include relatively small groups of participants. Combining compatible datasets could give researchers hundreds or eventually thousands of data points from a much broader firefighter population.

That scale, Oldham said, can produce stronger research findings that are more applicable across the fire service.

One area Oldham and his colleagues have already studied extensively is firefighter shift schedules. Researchers at the ROARHP Lab use wearable WHOOP monitors to examine factors including heart rate, sleep, recovery and physiological strain. They can compare firefighter health and performance before and after departments change schedules.

The Fire Data Consortium could dramatically expand what researchers can learn from such studies by allowing them to compare information across departments and locations.

“The fire service does not have a shortage of data. It has a problem connecting and using it,” said Siena Carroll, co-founder and chief operating officer of Satori Defense, which provides the artificial intelligence technology supporting the project.

That technology, called MARC-MK, operates on premises at ETAMU in a secure, closed-loop environment. The system can help researchers clean, standardize and combine datasets before conducting large-scale analyses.

Oldham has already seen the difference the technology can make. He said processing three months of wearable data manually once required five graduate assistants to spend approximately 200 hours organizing and preparing the information. MARC-MK can accomplish comparable data-processing work in about 40 seconds.

The researchers, however, remain in control of what the evidence means.

“AI does not replace ROARHP's researchers or the consortium's subject-matter experts,” Carroll said. “It gives them a more complete picture and the ability to work at a speed and scale that were not previously possible.”

Research built around firefighters

Oldham has spent years researching human performance among firefighters, law enforcement officers, athletes and other tactical populations. At the ROARHP Lab—short for Research Opportunities in Athletics, Recreation, Health, and Performance—faculty and student researchers use advanced exercise science technology to study movement, cardiovascular fitness, body composition, blood chemistry and other aspects of human performance.

The lab’s work with first responders is particularly focused on building occupational readiness and resilience. That work is part of the Department of Health and Human Performance’s broader mission to promote health and strengthen communities through education, research and service.

For Oldham, sophisticated technology is ultimately a means of serving the people behind the data.

“It is about the technology, the AI,” Oldham said. “But what I think is paramount is that this is truly about serving the fire service industry. That is at the heart of this effort.”

His collaborators share that focus.

Dr. Jenna Yentes, associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Sport Management at Texas A&M University, has a personal connection to the profession. Her father was a firefighter, and she has witnessed the physical toll the career can take over time.

“If we can provide data that allows administrators to allocate or acquire more funds for health and performance training, education, access—whatever it may be—then I am excited for that,” Yentes said.

Dr. Craig Hermans, chair of the departments of Biology and Human Performance at the University of Texas Permian Basin, brings experience as both a military veteran and former first responder.

“Ultimately, the goal is not simply to collect more data,” Hermans said. “It is to turn data into actionable information that can help firefighters remain healthy, effective and capable of serving their communities throughout longer careers.”

Cason Kelly, instructor and field experience coordinator at Tarleton State University and a co-investigator on the project, puts the mission in even simpler terms.

“I have described my personal and professional mission as ‘bringing first responders home to their families,'” Kelly said. “FDC is the kind of broadly impactful project that can do just that.”

Building something bigger

The REF award provides one year to establish the consortium’s foundation. Part of the funding will expand MARC-MK’s capabilities, support collaborative meetings and provide administrative and graduate assistant support.

Eventually, Oldham envisions a much larger network involving universities, fire departments and private organizations contributing and accessing data under carefully controlled conditions. Researchers could use the growing repository to investigate questions involving shift schedules, cardiovascular health, sleep, fitness, occupational stress, injuries and other factors affecting firefighter health and performance.

The consortium could also position researchers to pursue larger federal and private research grants and expand the collaboration across institutions and states.

For Oldham, however, publications, grants and sophisticated AI are secondary to the people the research is intended to serve.

“We are here to serve the first responder industry,” he said. “We do that with really fancy tools of AI and exercise physiology equipment. But if we start with that servant heart first, that mentality, then the data is secondary.”