Community Mapping: using volunteer knowledge for local insight

With the release of our latest Eke Taumata progress report, we are sharing some examples of how Fire and Emergency is shifting the dial to achieve our culture goal.

Involving volunteer brigades in community mapping, an intelligence-gathering tool developed by Fire and Emergency’s National Community Readiness & Recovery team, is leading to richer conversations and stronger connections.

“Our brigades are the community,” says Michelle Griffiths, Principal Advisor Recovery. “Working closely with them to better understand the communities we serve makes perfect sense to me, they know their communities better than anyone.”

The tool creates shared knowledge to build a more complete picture of what matters most to this community. The map looks at categories of interest, from social and economic landscapes to natural and built environments, and also includes other factors like key individuals, cultural and rural lenses, and the history of the area.

Michelle developed the tool to work more in the risk reduction and readiness space to support the response and recovery phases. “Planning ahead and being proactive, and truly understanding the communities we serve, will only help how we response and recovery from any type of emergency” says Michelle. “This process gives us a way to understand our communities better so we can support them before a crisis hits. I wanted a very simple tool that people could pick up and be able to use in recovery situations, but it can also be used to build relationships and pre-plan for the future.”

Kumara Volunteer Fire Brigade was among the first to test the new community mapping tool. During the 40-minute session, volunteers shared their knowledge, highlighted unique aspects of their community and engaged in conversations around their own personal insights and perspectives. They found the exercise valuable and even requested a copy of the completed community map to display on their station wall to continue the conversation and mark up any changes as the community evolves.

Zak Neale, Sr. Advisor Community Readiness & Recovery – West Coast, led the conversation with the Kumara VFB and has piloted conversations with other brigades on the West Coast. “The conversations that come out of creating a community map with our volunteers has been really rich,” says Zak. “Brigades may have had similar discussions in the past, but creating a community map puts their insights down on paper has been useful and intuitive for volunteers.”

For Zak, the pilots have been a great start at engaging our brigades in discussions around their communities. However, he thinks this engagement will be even more meaningful the more brigades complete these community maps and the more this tool can be used. "If leadership has a dossier of community maps to pull from, having this information will help our leaders make more informed decisions and help all of us do our jobs more effectively."

Following successful pilots in other districts, including in Wellington and Hawke’s Bay, more brigades are set to take part, building a network of knowledge to guide future readiness and response.

This story is an example of how Fire and Emergency is shifting the dial to achieve our culture goal: to be a place where people feel they belong, and supported and empowered to thrive, so we can better serve our communities and each other. It supports the culture outcome “building trust and increasing opportunities for engagement and influence” (Pou 1). 

Read more in the latest Eke Taumata Six-Monthly Progress Report.

If you have an example to share from your team, district, or watch, share it with us via Story Line here.