A university student has created a website where anyone in New Zealand can self-report hazards, inspired by the extreme weather that hit Mount Maunganui at the start of the year.
Yash Kumar launched Report The Hazards earlier this month as a “proof of concept” website for what easy and accessible hazard reporting could look like.
The site has a simple form that people can fill out to log their hazard, with options including potholes, landslides, earthquakes and flooding.
It also features an interactive map that shows the reported hazards across the country.
He said the site was not created for profit but rather as a tool to help his community.
The University of Auckland computer science and IT management student had two main issues with how people currently report hazards. Firstly, people he knew seemed confused about how to report hazards.
Kumar said Google recommended calling 111, which could feel extreme if the hazard wasn’t that serious, or telling council, which is a process some people might not be familar with.
Secondly, when people tried to publicly report them, the information would end up spread across a variety of local online forums, social media posts and group chats.
“There has to be a better way,” he said.
Kumar said his website was an example of how a consolidated, national hazard reporting site could work.
He was motivated to create the project after observing all of the extreme weather events that hit the country in the past year.
Last month’s landslides in Mount Maunganui, which killed six people, finally prompted him to create the site.
This week, a storm battered the country, causing flooding, slips and widespread power outages.
Shohil Kishore was one of Kumar’s lecturers at university and praised his project for the “clear potential value for New Zealand communities”.
“Communities are often first-hand observers and possess critical information during disasters,” Kishore said.
“In crisis situations, people need simple approaches to reporting hazards and accessing information ... this website delivers just that.”
He said there were advantages to “grassroots, community-driven reporting” and suggested Kumar could take the project further by making an app that gave real-time notifications.
Kishore said councils and Government agencies could support community-driven initiatives like these by helping them moderate and verify the reports they get.
Natural hazard preparation expert Lauren Vinnell said while Kumar’s website was a good “prototype”, there were many improvements that could be made.
She said the site should have information on how to keep yourself safe while trying to self-report a hazard, because she was worried people might put themselves in danger to get information or photos.
Vinnell flagged the risk of a site like this growing in popularity enough to compete with official sources such as GeoNet, which people use to report earthquakes.
One way to combat that would be to have clear links on the site to official sources, she suggested.
She was also concerned that people might look at an area on the site’s map, see no hazards reported and assume nothing was wrong there.
Vinnell said previous natural disasters, like the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake, had taught experts that in times of extreme danger, people were often too busy or did not have the connectivity to make online reports.
She acknowledged more efforts could be made to educate the public on the best way to report hazards to official sources and said Kumar’s project was a “good conversation starter”.
The best middle ground could be for sites like Report The Hazards to be used for low-risk inconveniences, like potholes and road closures, while serious hazards would continue to be reported to council and the police, she said.
Janhavi Gosavi is a Wellington-based journalist for the New Zealand Herald who covers news in the capital.