A model of a household, built on established doctrine
Most preparedness tools are a list someone wrote. This one models a household: what it has, what that means, and what to do next, drawing on what emergency professionals already agree on.
Researched, then built
Over 30 design documents, written before and during the build. The comms plan follows FEMA family emergency communication planning, cross-checked against US Army patrol doctrine. Where the two agree independently, the app is confident.
One model, everything derived
The household is a set of facts. One engine, a pure function, turns those facts into the score, the gaps, the tasks and the plan. Calm, approaching and happening are the same questions at different urgency, inside one product.
A gap is an answer
Every question can be skipped, and skipping never produces a wrong number. Unknown is never treated as no. "You have no way to see in the dark" is a complete, useful answer for a household that has told us almost nothing.
Numbers that state their denominator
Every score says what it is out of: "80% of the water we would suggest for three people". Readiness is scored per area, over what is known, the way FEMA asks jurisdictions to rate their own capabilities.
Classified by capability
Things are identified by what they do, following the GS1 Global Product Classification. A flashlight provides light and a power bank provides charge, whatever the brand. Over 70 kinds of things are understood without anyone typing a product name.
Content grows without code
Hazards, countries, tasks and questions are data, checked when they are published. Today: 83 tasks, 16 capabilities and emergency numbers for over 150 countries. Adding a council or county is a matter of settings, with no rebuild.
Works offline, loses nothing
The plan lives on the device. On a phone it is saved twice. Changes queue up and sync to the household's account when there is signal again. It is built to be read during the outage.
Multilingual by construction
English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. English cannot change without every language changing with it: an automated check fails the build if a translation falls behind.
Private by design
A household needs only an email and a ZIP code or postcode to sign up. Its plan is never sold or shown to anyone. Authorities see numbers by area, never a name or a plan, and usage analytics are anonymous and run through our own servers: no cookies, no recordings, no profiles.
Tested end to end
Over 600 automated tests cover the app and the model beneath it, including walk-throughs of whole households from first answer to the day of the event. Web, iOS and Android share one codebase.
The standards it draws on
The model draws on existing standards and doctrine, and names each source.
- FEMA family emergency communication planningthe out-of-area contact, and one person everyone reports to
- FEMA Stakeholder Preparedness Reviewrating readiness capability by capability
- US Army patrol doctrinecommunication in a fixed order with fallbacks
- GS1 Global Product Classificationclassifying things by what they are and do