its name various times. The college is nowadays situated in Kuopio and has various facilities for teaching, including special classrooms for teaching the various aspects in the several fields of fire fighting and includes a 23-hectare training ground. The college can accommodate 350 people (of which most are students). The Emergency Services College is responsible for the coordination of the research activities for the rescue services. The tasks of Research and Development unit include: analysing research needs, collecting the information following studies and summarising research programmes in Finland and abroad, and carrying out studies independently and in cooperation with other research institutes. The main focus is to contribute to improve the use of the research results in the rescue services by integrating the results in the curricula of the ESC. The Research and Development Unit employs five full-time employees. Moreover, about 10 persons take part in the research and development projects every year. Special expertise of Research and Development unit are in ICT within emergency services, CBRNE and dealing with cross-border emergencies, exploitation of statistics, future foresight in rescue services and accident investigation. The ESC has 38 hectare wide training ground. The training ground has approximately 100 different training points or simulators. Field tests and authentication methods can be easily performed for the research and development purposes. The college's current principal is Mrs Mervi Parviainen. Industrial fire brigades There are over 150 industrial fire brigades in Finland. These fire brigades usually operate in large industrial sites with the fire fighters also working at the site. Their staff have often received special training for demanding industry-area rescue missions. This special training can include dealing with poisonous substances, operating in extremely complex industrial buildings and other similar tasks. Voluntary fire fighting A large part of Finnish fire and rescue responsibility is on voluntary fire brigades. They are contracted by the municipality and are usually associations. In some municipalities, the fire fighting is entirely a voluntary fire brigade's task. There are over 600 voluntary fire brigades in the country. In 400 municipalities the voluntary fire brigades provide all the fire and rescue services. Approximately 47% of Finland's population lives in these municipalities and they make up for 95% of the country's area. The voluntary fire brigades offer approximately 15 000 trained fire fighters that are actively in service. Voluntary fire brigades operate in all risk areas. Types of voluntary fire brigades In Finland,