Apple’s release of the iPad Pro unveiled a world of new possibilities to me both as a Fire Captain and as the founder of a tech company that provides Incident Management software.

We’re a long way from the black and white images of cops with their feet up on the desk and firemen playing cribbage in Fire Station USA. Since 9/11 and the dawn of the iPad, emergency services is becoming increasingly armed with the latest and most intuitive technological enhancements from the consumer space to track, measure, and analyze.

As the technical lead for Tablet Command, the most frequent question I hear is “Which iPad should my department get?”

The answer comes with some personal preference but some absolute requirements or recommendations. I’ll walk you through the difficult questions that everyone wonders about. I’ll start by getting to the point and then explain the different options.

My official recommendation for public safety (fire) users:

iPad Air 2
64GB
Wifi + Cellular (includes GPS receiver)

When I look back on my travels and readings from 2014, I logged a tremendous amount of exposure to several different emergency incident command gurus and methodologies. One of the methodologies that I have become a student of, literally, is Blue Card Command. I’m currently enrolled in the online portion of the command course with the classroom portion soon to follow.

Its risky to start a blog. Will we run out of gas? Will we have anything interesting to say?