Preventing wildfire damage with a home assessment app

Project Details

From Paper, to Digital, to Huge Program Growth

FireSmart is a national nonprofit program that relies on engagement from citizens and their communities to really create change with regards to the prevention of wildfire damage in at-risk communities. The more people adopt the program, and apply the learnings from it to their communities, the more preventative their community can be against wildfire – because, realistically, it’s a lot easier for one person to assess their home, garage, and shed for threat from wildfire than it is to send out one or two emergency services representatives to tackle a whole community’s worth.

While the Home Assessment program had been running within FireSmart for a number of years, it was a paper-based, inefficient, and difficult process that, in turn, was inhibiting the program’s growth. All of this led to the idea behind the FireSmart Begins at Home nonprofit mobile app.

The Results

In 2020, users are averaging 1.5 properties assessed every day – a huge increase from the velocity of property assessments in the past, wherein emergency services representatives needed to be scheduled to come out to a property. We expect to see that increase even further as the tool is rolled out nation-wide. We continue to work with FireSmart on not only the support and optimization of this product, but on a swath of new digital projects – from their website, to a central web application, to another mobile application – all as a part of their ongoing digital transformation as an organization. On top of the successful growth of the program and adoption of the app, the FireSmart Begins at Home app also won an award for Best Mobile App from Digital Alberta.