Building an EMS Batmobile

Fifty years ago saw the TV debut of the first full-size, fully operational Batmobile. The vehicle was created in just three weeks by car customizer George Barris, who took Lincoln’s 1955 “Futura” concept car and reimagined it into a ride fit for a superhero. Fast forward five decades and a new Batmobile is hitting the streets, just as high-tech as the Caped Crusader’s and with the same mission of saving lives.

An exclusive white paper—available this month at EMSWorld.com/whitepaper—documents the process undertaken by the New Orleans Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness  (NOHSEP) and New Orleans EMS (NOEMS) to engineer a cross-collaborative first responder vehicle of the future.

 “We called this project the ‘Batmobile’ for the single reason that most people can relate to what the Batmobile has represented since first appearing in 1966, and we hope we have created something with which even Bruce Wayne would be impressed enough to want,” says George Barlow Brown, NOHSEP communications/IT section chief, who led the project with Capt. Adam M. Brickeen, NOEMS liaison for NOHSEP.

The “EMS Batmobile” is a 2016 Ford Explorer Interceptor, built for New Orleans EMS as a field supervisor vehicle. “We feel our vehicle has emerging technology, products and a purpose not found in a modern first responder vehicle, all while maintaining the ability to transport five seat-belted people safely,” says Brown.

As it would with an emergency operations center, NOHSEP assigned liaisons from each of its first responder entities—police, fire and EMS—to the vehicle initiative.

“We focused on EMS for a simple reason: EMS needs to transport the most ‘stuff,’” says Brown. “An ambulance offers a massive body and transporting capability, so streamlining an ambulance was not our goal. Rather, New Orleans EMS has shift supervisors who respond in a ‘sprint’ capacity, often arriving on scene first and beginning treatment before an ambulance arrives. We wanted to reinvent the vehicle these supervisors use to better accommodate their requirements.

“As we examined the role of the initial EMS responder, we saw cross-collaboration into the world of incident management, where that first-responding supervisor vehicle could relay vital information from an MCI. This spawned new ways to think about vehicle lighting, camera placement and even the equipment that should be transported,” says Brickeen.

Every component of the vehicle—which debuted at the 2016 EMS World Expo in New Orleans—has been selected to create a collaborative, all-inclusive product to show how municipalities can change the way they see technology and create a more effective emergency response vehicle that maximizes safety and economic efficiency.

Go to EMSWorld.com/whitepaper to access this and other white papers relating to EMS ops.