Next-Generation Fire Service Tech Lessons from 2025

As most of us are winding down from 2025 and finishing annual reports, it is a wonderful time to reflect on the lessons learned from the previous year to reset for the upcoming challenges in the fire service. From my standpoint, the articles that have been written over the past year help outline what a next-generation fire department can look like. Here are my top five from 2025:

Training without risk

The improvements to virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality systems combined with digital twins are a convergence of technologies that offer the ability for firefighters to rehearse catastrophic, but low-frequency incidents, adding degrees of realism.

This next-level firefighter training aids in stress inoculation of crews without burning a single gallon of fuel or risking a single injury. This concept offers a fundamental change to how fire departments achieve true operational readiness. This, in my opinion, is how the fire service moves from reactive training to predictive threat rehearsal.

AI as a force multiplier in many roles

As many fire departments across the nation are seeing funding dry up, the use of artificial technology (AI) technological advancements will allow us to do more with less. Whether generating training scenarios, coaching leadership communication, planning community risk reduction activities, or just being a productivity amplifier for under resourced departments, AI is a great assistant. 

As this technology advances, it will become more integrated with the software and services the fire service uses. Prompt engineering is a huge step towards making full use of these tools but there are a lot of applications in development to allow pre-action without human input. Initial situational awareness, fast attack on wildfires, and even predictive dispatching algorithms are all possible through the power of AI.

Future proofing fire stations as mission platforms 

Fire stations have always been a staple of a community, homes to those who serve, and a 50-plus year operational asset. To make sure communities can adapt to emerging needs, fire stations need to be thought of as mission architecture, so they are a place where people and technology can be deployed to perform a specific mission.

Thinking ahead, beyond the current needs favor modular expansion strategies and forecast based station placements. Looking at the newer hazards, making sure the firefighters are safe with lithium-ion batteries in nearly every piece of equipment they use warrants design considerations. Finally, tracking future opportunities, it is also an important thing to think about how our lives change as lightweight aerials, and automated drone activities become the norm. Ultimately, 2025 provided a great glimpse of what a fire station needs to be within the next two decades.

Layered technology for roadway safety 

No roadway incident is the same. The variables of weather, time of day, vehicles involved, traffic patterns, and ultimately the individual behaviors of both the responders, patients, and on-lookers require a layered approach to improving safety.

Improving the visibility of wearables, gear, and apparatus, drone overwatch, digital driver alerting, and attenuators or modular vehicle barriers each add a layer of safety to aid responders making it home at the end of their shift. It treats every roadway as a hostile operating environment and applies defensive strategies designed to protect crews.

CRR technology is the ultimate budget multiplier

Prevention programs are not just a feel-good, get to it if we can, or a waste of our operational talent. They are a strategic necessity and I genuinely believe that an ounce of prevention prevents a pound of cure. As the fire service battles increased call volumes, recruitment/retention struggles, burnout, post-traumatic stress disorder, reduced budgets, cancer rates, increasing community expectations, and other issues, we must shift our mindset to be more proactive.

Every call we run is a failure of our community risk reduction programs. Data-driven community risk assessments, alternate code compliance solutions, and virtual CRR programs pay huge dividends to all the issues we face.

Conclusion

Everyday we are not progressing we are no longer maintaining status quo, rather we are slipping behind. The fire service is not one that can afford to become a failed community service. Progression is the only way we stay relevant, mission ready, and proactively address the threats to our community. Leveraging technology can help good people do great things. Be safe!