Community risk reduction (CRR) can be a complex undertaking, but it gets much easier when you have the right tools.
CRR enables fire departments to identify and mitigate risks in their communities, from training community members on natural disaster responses to conducting public education campaigns on fire safety and emergency preparedness, and more.
We’ve written in the past about how improving your inspection process is part of this formula, and how the inspection features of the 3Di Engage software platform makes the inspection process significantly faster, such as helping the Los Angeles Fire Department cut inspection time by 50%.
But of course, CRR doesn’t stop with inspections and your CRR efforts are exponentially more effective when you have your community’s support and collaboration.
That’s one reason the 3Di Engage for Community Risk Reduction solution was built with community engagement in mind.
Easier and more productive engagement with your community
How can you get your community involved in your CRR program if they don’t know where to get information, or don’t know how to ask questions?
The Public Outreach & Engagement module on 3Di Engage empowers residents to become more involved in risk reduction efforts, such as ensuring their properties meet safety standards or taking part in programs to clear brush and reduce hazardous fuels.
This leads to higher levels of program participation and improved compliance with risk reduction goals — all while requiring fewer resources from the departments using 3Di Engage.
With intuitive public portals on 3Di Engage, which are available on mobile and web, you can connect your community to the information they need, helping educate them on new initiatives, fire safety guidance, and more. Residents and businesses alike can establish accounts and get their own dashboard, all accessible 24/7.
This portal system gives fire marshals and other fire prevention professionals a central place for communication with the public and frees up their time by allowing citizens to find answers to common questions and complete tasks without needing to reach out as often — such as educational materials on protecting their home from fires and other natural disasters.
A more efficient way to handle permits, complaints, and requests
In order to effectively identify and address issues, community leaders need ways to not only send out important information, but to field requests and complaints from the community.
For instance, a resident might notice an issue with a fire hydrant in their neighborhood. The resident could easily log into your custom portal built on 3Di Engage, and provide the location of the fire hydrant, as well as details about the issue they have observed (e.g. the hydrant is leaking or broken). Having all your requests together in one system lets you prioritize tasks and take action as quickly as needed, such as dispatching a crew to repair or maintain the fire hydrant.
Furthermore, the 3Di Engage Permitting module enables residents to easily request and pay for permits online, such as event permits to help ensure risks are appropriately mitigated. On the back-end, the automated processes and lack of paperwork make it even easier for departments to review permit applications and grant or reject them.
3Di Engage also allows you to send alerts and notifications through channels such as email and SMS to give your community important updates in a timely manner regarding service requests, permits, and more.
Automated reporting and analysis
Risk reduction is an evolving process with countless moving parts. If you lack the ability to efficiently collect, organize, or analyze all this data, it can be difficult to identify and prioritize risks.
The reporting dashboards on 3Di Engage gives you a real-time view of your risk reduction activities, history, and trends. From here, you get actionable insights to inform policy decisions and adjust as necessary to public education initiatives.
Say you’re using the Defensible Space Inspection & Wildfire Prevention module on 3Di Engage, to reduce the risk of wildfire damage in your community. Using the analytics provided by the 3Di Engage dashboard, you discover that compliance with defensible space codes is declining. With this information, you can focus on increasing community education about the importance of defensible space in protecting their homes and families from wildfires – then easily track how successful this education campaign is in reducing risk.
Better coordination between government bodies
Coordination and collaboration between multiple complex institutions can be challenging, especially if there are competing interests or a lack of trust among the stakeholders. From local government to community organizations and emergency response agencies, you have a lot of challenges to factor in.
Operating your program with 3Di eliminates data silos within your organization and between organizations, making it easier than ever for all stakeholders to access accurate data when they need it.
For instance, 3Di Engage provides countless tools to streamline collaboration and coordination with local government bodies, such as syncing with the county assessor’s office to keep your property data up to date.
By accessing the most up-to-date property data, fire departments can identify areas of the community that are at higher risk of wildfire due to factors such as vegetation type, topography, and proximity to wildland areas. This information allows you to prioritize your resources and develop more targeted wildfire prevention strategies for these high-risk areas.
This type of data also helps plan smarter evacuation plans and improve fire department response times to incidents in the community.
Why choose 3Di for Community Risk Reduction?
With the level of customization and enterprise-level tools that 3Di Engage provides, you might expect it to be a slow and expensive process to get started. But at 3Di we pride ourselves in our ability to deliver exceptional solutions in record time at a sensible investment.
The foundation of our solution is prebuilt, with modules set up for common use cases, from engagement to inspections to case management. We assemble the solution you need using these modules, and customize them as needed, cutting back development time by months or even years. In other words, you get a fully customized solution in as little as a few weeks.
And because there aren’t major development costs involved, we can provide this platform with an affordable subscription model, adjusted to fit your budget. You have easy pricing predictability, allowing you to scale your program without any surprise price hikes.
Ready to build your Community Risk Reduction program, efficiently and affordably? Select a time to see 3Di Engage in action, and see which solutions are best for you.
