We worked alongside Fire and Emergency New Zealand subject matter experts to develop and deliver a suite of action-orientated tools designed to help influence the behaviour of vulnerable audiences and reduce their risk from fires.
These tools included:
Over the past five years, our work with Fire and Emergency New Zealand has focused on helping underserved and higher-risk audiences better protect themselves and their whānau from unwanted fires—both at home and outdoors.
Together, we’ve created digital assessment and action tools that convey crucial information quickly and facilitate easy action. This can make the difference between someone having the worst day of their life or not.
"Saving precious seconds — getting the whole whānau out fast in a house fire."
Second only to smoke alarms, a clear escape plan is vital for reducing the risk of injury or death in a house fire. Escape My House is a digital tool that helps people create and share personalised escape plans and share it with others in their home. Ghost worked with Fire and Emergency's Risk and Community Engagement teams to transform the existing comprehensive assessment form into a simple set of questions that can be completed in minutes, resulting in a personalised 3-step escape plan.
One key insight from this mahi was to show important tips and ‘did you know’ callouts as people answered questions, increasing the likelihood of completing the process. Since 2018, we have delivered a Te Reo version and continue to enhance the tool for new hazards such as lithium-ion batteries.
"Reducing the risk of unwanted fires by answering one simple question — can I light, or not?"
Check It’s Alright expanded on the success of Escape My House to address outdoor fire safety, helping people get a clear answer to the question, “Can I light, or not?”. Lean research showed that many people considering a burn-off, camping, or gathering outdoors struggled to find clear information. Signs and warnings were often contradictory or hard to find.
Ghost worked with Fire and Emergency experts to turn complex weather data and regulations into a simple personalised tool providing clarity and educating users about risks and how to manage them.
We distilled the guidance to three questions: what will you be doing, where, and when. Using these inputs, we integrated weather data from NIWA, current fire season settings, and fire danger index to provide a simple answer: Yes (with safety tips), Yes with a permit (and instructions), or No (and reasons why).
Since 2019, the tool has exceeded expectations and has been improved to include other activities that generate heat/sparks (like welding) and provide more comprehensive advice for risky conditions.
"Helping people take a single action — one that might just save their lives."
To improve New Zealanders' knowledge of home fire safety and encourage more Home Fire Safety Visits (HFSVs), there was a need for an online tool to direct visitors to the next best step. With home fire safety content dispersed across the Fire and Emergency website, consolidating it into a single, easily navigable destination was crucial.
We found that while people want to protect themselves and their whānau from unwanted fires, they are often unsure where to start. We designed and tested a new triage tool to direct people to the most important action they can take as simply and quickly as possible.
Building on the success of our previous tools, the triage tool uses simple questions to target the most important actions identified with Fire and Emergency's experts. When a critical action is identified, the tool immediately guides users to the appropriate next step. We are currently testing this approach and plan to implement it on the Fire and Emergency website in early 2024.
Due to the effectiveness of our previous tools, Fire and Emergency commissioned Ghost to deliver a new tool to help rural communities assess their preparedness and collective response to wildfire. Given the diverse conditions and needs of rural communities across New Zealand, we aimed to distil complex assessment documentation into simple questions and personalised recommendations.
We are exploring how conditional logic can use answers from earlier questions to refine subsequent ones, ensuring relevance and ease of completion. This work is in development, with an early prototype tested and validated. We are aligning with Fire and Emergency experts on the question hierarchy and logic model to connect user answers to prioritised actions and resources. The initial tool is expected to be delivered in 2024.
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