Institute of the North Rhine-Westphalia Fire Service (Institut der Feuerwehr Nordrhein-Westfalen; IdF) in Münster has the legal mandate to maintain a central training and advanced training facility with competence centers for the improvement and further development of fire protection, assistance and disaster management, and to ensure leadership training and advanced training as well as the imparting of specialized expertise at this facility. With a staff of about 210 employees, the institute is Germany's largest firefighting training institution.
With a capacity of approximately 300 boarding places, a wide variety of events are offered and held here for professional and volunteer members of public and private fire departments. Qualification of managers and instructors as well as the imparting of specialised knowledge are the main focus here. Another task of the IdF NRW is to train the members of crisis teams of the state government, district governments and the districts and independent cities.
One of the competence centres at IdF NRW deals with security research issues. As a result, the Institute was initially involved in a number of research projects as a consortium partner or as an associated partner and subcontractor in the past and has participated in other research projects on an informal level. Most of these projects were at national level; however, the IdF NRW has also been involved in European projects. Currently, the IdF NRW is involved in several projects, especially in vegetation firefighting. The IdF NRW is also looking to participate in other projects, also as a consortium leader.
