protection classes
Protection classes are the 10 categories used by the Insurance Services Office, Inc. (ISO), to rank the fire protection in cities and towns according to these four factors.
- Fire department quality. This includes its equipment, staffing (i.e., paid or volunteer), training, and geographic distribution of firefighting companies. This factor accounts for 50 percent of the total classification.
- Water supply system. This includes the condition, distribution, inspection, and maintenance of fire hydrants and a comparison of the available water to the amount needed to extinguish a fire. This accounts for 40 percent of the total classification.
- Fire alarm and communications systems. These include telephone systems, telephone lines, staffing of these systems, and the quality of the dispatching system. This factor accounts for 10 percent of the total classification.
- Community risk reduction. This involves a community's efforts in fire risk reduction, such as fire prevention code adoption and enforcement, public fire safety education, and fire investigation
The ISO public protection classification (PPC) program is a rating system that measures the quality of public fire protection in fire districts across the country, ranging from 1 (best) to 10 (worst). While nearly all US insurers use ISO's PPC system in calculating insurance rates for homes, many insurers deviate from the rules of the PPC program through the use of independently filed rules.
