Open source · Switzerland

The incident board for the command post.

KP Rück turns the magnetic board in the rear command post into a digital one: incidents, crews, vehicles and equipment on one board – live on every device.

Open the demo No account – pick a role and go

Incident board: columns from received through to closed, incident cards in between, crews on the left, equipment on the right

For whom

Militia fire brigades
Local fire brigades
Regional support fire brigades
Professional fire brigades

For what

Everyday incidents
Storm situations
Several events at once

Grown out of the real operational work of Feuerwehr Oberwil BL – proven there, and developed further ever since.

Your data stays with you.

KP Rück is open source and runs on a machine in your own station or in your own cloud. Incidents, crews, vehicles and equipment stay under your control.

No licence fees
No vendor lock-in
Run it yourself, extend it yourself

The benchmark

«When the network is gone, paper is in charge»

A board that goes black in a power cut is not a command tool. So redundancy is built in at several levels – every level works without the one above it.

Level 1

Several devices on the same state

Tablets, projector displays and phones all hang live off the same board. If one device fails or freezes, another carries on – there is nothing to rescue and nothing to catch up on.

Level 2

A second instance at the station

KP Rück can also be run locally alongside. The built-in sync keeps events, incidents, crews, vehicles, equipment and settings in step between the cloud and the local database. The map comes from your own tile server, and the printer is on the LAN anyway.

Level 3

Paper is in charge

The state of the board goes to the thermal printer every few minutes, the situation sheet at the push of a button. If everything fails, the last sheet becomes the board. On restart, one person transfers what was done by hand back into the app.

From the alarm to the report

One event, one board.

This is what a storm night looks like in the command post – what happens on the board ends up in the incident report afterwards.

21:14

Alarm received

The reports come in.

Through the reporting form, by telephone, or over the open interface from the dispatch system (Divera or FireHub, for example). The duty officer takes one over with a click – the report becomes an incident on the board.

21:19

Deployment

Crew and vehicles are assigned.

Personnel, vehicles and equipment onto the incident by drag and drop. The system helps the incident commander spot and surface double bookings, missing resources and contradictions. Whoever arrives checks themselves in with a QR code.

21:26

Map

Who is where.

Every incident on one map, with the vehicles optionally by GPS position. When a vehicle reaches the scene, the board proposes the status change itself.

21:48

Recon

The recon team reports back.

The recon team fills in the form on their own phone – photos included. The report hangs on the right incident instead of getting lost in a group chat.

23:30

Board

Everyone sees the same board.

The projector in the command post, the tablet on the table and the quartermaster's phone all show the same state – without anybody pressing «refresh».

06:40

Report

The incident report writes itself along the way.

The incident log and the response times build up as you go and turn into a PDF. Corrections are made with new entries, not with an eraser – so the night stays on the record.

From the demo

This is what it looks like.

Every image is taken from the public demo. Click «Open the demo» and you are standing at the same board.

The screenshots are in German: the public demo is, and they come from it – restaged images would be a claim rather than evidence.

Projector view: every incident phase side by side on one screen — Projector view

For the wall in the darkened command post: all phases side by side, without controls

Status view: vehicles, incidents, crews and equipment side by side, each with availability and assignment — Status

Vehicles, incidents, crews and equipment side by side – who is free, who is committed, who is where

Map view: incidents by priority, vehicle positions and assignments — Map

Every incident by priority, plus the vehicle positions and the assignments between them

Vehicle status: vehicles with call sign, driver, destination and status — Vehicles

Call sign, driver, destination and status of every vehicle at a glance

Reporting form: address, report, priority, incident type and caller details — Reporting form

Capture telephone reports and walk-ins in a structured way – by link or QR code, without an account

Recon form: incident, «I am on scene» and hazards to tick — Recon form

On the recon team's phone: report on scene, tick the hazards, attach photos

Field view: the crew's own site with its reports to the command post, the situation and the crew — Field

Each crew sees only its own sites – arrived, pick-up needed, incident finished, without the radio

Assignments: several incidents bundled into one route — Assignments

Several incidents as one route – with crew, resources and an order the board optimises by distance

Exercise controls: generate single or targeted incidents, automation and field simulation — Exercise

Feed in exercise situations instead of inventing them – cleanly separated from the real thing

Switching over

What changes.

None of this is broken today – the magnetic board has worked for decades. KP Rück steps into the same places, only without the copying out.

Today	With KP Rück
Magnetic board on the wall	Digital board on every device
Telephone notes on slips of paper	A reporting form that hangs on the incident
Excel list for crews and vehicles	A live overview that keeps itself up to date
WhatsApp group for reports back	Structured reports with photos
A radio message for every status change	Status and reports straight from the crew – the radio channel stays clear
Report after the incident	The report builds up during it

Scope

What is in it.

Grown out of real events and exercises, not out of a feature list. Everything that comes from outside – alerting, GPS, printers – is optional: KP Rück also runs entirely without those connections.

Board & deployment

Columns are incident phases – cards move left to right by drag and drop
Assign personnel, vehicles and equipment – KP Rück warns about double assignments and makes resource conflicts visible
Equipment at the scene: which resource is assigned to which incident, and since when
Priorities, running times and deadlines visible per incident
Assignments: several incidents as one route for a crew, order optimised by distance at the push of a button
Recurring assignments, such as cordoning off an area or clearing storm-damaged trees, can be prepared and made available directly when an event is opened
QR check-in – whoever arrives checks themselves in
Assignment slip with QR code for teams and drivers, issued directly at the command post
Projector view for the wall in the command post – the same incident cards as on the board, only without controls
Command palette and keyboard shortcuts for the fast hand

Alarms & reports

Open interface – any dispatch system can open incidents
Can take alarms from Divera or FireHub optional
Reporting form by link or QR for telephone callers and walk-ins
Arrivals land in the pool, taken over with one click
Alerting the crew from the board itself optional
Recon reports with photos, straight from the recon team's phone
Field view for teams: see their own incident sites, report arrival and completion, request pickup, and send updates and reports with photos to the command post

Map & vehicles

Every incident by priority and status on one map
Vehicle positions by GPS optional
A status proposal as soon as a vehicle reaches the scene
Assignments as a line – which vehicle belongs to which incident
Map tiles from your own server at the station as well

Afterwards & operations

Incident report as a PDF with the incident log and the response times – it builds up during the incident and is already largely prepared when the crews return
A running log that is only ever added to, never overwritten
Outstanding-items list: open reports, pending pickups and equipment still left at an incident site remain visible until completion
Your own administration area per brigade: crew, fleet, equipment lists, incident types and priorities
Import and export as Excel
Thermal printing at the station through your own print agent optional
Roles: edit or read along only, dark interface for the darkened command post
Exercise mode with a generator and simulated journeys, cleanly separated from the real thing

Related project

KP Rück keeps the overview at the rear. KP Front commands at the front.

KP Front turns the situation map and the command table at the scene into digital ones: tactical symbols, site plans and SCBA monitoring, even without a network. Its own app, the same handwriting – the two can hand alarms to each other, but neither needs the other.

Take a look at KP Front

Running both – without setting everything up twice

Dispatch: The same payload for both. Your dispatch integration is built once; each app only gets its own address.
Divera access: One key for both – the same alarms, the same roster. optional
Print agent: One service in the station serves both apps and both kinds of printer.
Roster: The same source in the same file format – the same person on both sides.
Keywords: The same alarm keyword list, so the same classification in both apps.

Database, updates and login stay separate. Neither one needs the other to run. Guide: both on one server →

Questions & answers

The most common questions.

Why switch?

No more double bookings. No report lost in a group chat. Less radio traffic for questions that are on the board anyway. Everybody sees the same picture at the same time – and the incident report is already there when you get back, instead of the weekend after.

Who owns the data?

You do. Every fire brigade runs its own KP Rück – on its own machine at the station or in the cloud. You decide where incident data, crew and fleet live; nothing goes to a vendor or to third parties.

What does it cost?

The software itself costs nothing. KP Rück is open source (AGPL) – no licence, no subscription, no per-device fee. What remains are your own costs for operation, infrastructure and any external support you may need.

What does it take to run?

A small mini-PC or server at the station is enough. Setup, updates and backups require someone with Docker and command-line experience, whether in the brigade, the municipality or an IT support provider. The guide and administration area lead through the setup. We are happy to answer general questions; data and operation remain the responsibility of each fire brigade.

Can we adapt it to how we work?

Yes. Every brigade has its own administration area: incident types, priorities, crew, fleet and equipment lists are all configurable there, and import and export run through Excel. And because the whole code is on GitHub , everything else can be built – by you or to order.

How do we start?

With the demo, without an account – pick a role and go. Then try it on an exercise; exercise mode is cleanly separated from the real thing. And if it fits: get in touch, we will help with the setup.

Contact

Tell us what you think.

Do you want to try KP Rück at your brigade? Is something missing, or does something not work the way you expect? Get in touch – we read everything.

For questions and open-ended ideas there are the GitHub discussions.

Report a bug What happened, and what did you expect? Drag screenshots straight into the form. Ask for something Is a step missing that belongs to how you work? Describe the case, not the solution.