Excellent. Covers all of Australia
This app does an excellent job of pulling together all of the information from all states and territories. It seems that the way the details are presented varies between states (who would have thought it!) but the top level presentation is consistent. The details in the current Victorian fires is superb, with detailed instructions for the worst areas on survival techniques. If this were a paid app I would buy it, as it is free it is a no brained!
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Needs to be much better
It's good that alerts can be set without creating an account. Thank-you.
However, the app is stuck in the 2000's for basic functionality. For an app with years of development and so critical for rural lives, it needs more careful thought on what people need to stay safe.
So much more needs to be done. A couple of easy suggestions: A single black burnt area conveys too little information. Just showing all the updates to the burnt area in an cycled animation would be a powerful addition, eg like a rain radar image cycling through changes to the area with timestamps. Without any fancy analysis, this would be incredibly helpful to see the historical direction and velocity of the fire. notwithstanding updates to burn areas are not on regular intervals. eg, it could be made to work by adjusting the animation proportionally to the times of the updates.
Alerts also need more flexibility. It would be helpful for have multiple alerts levels for wider ranges. eg all alerts for 30km out, but critical alerts for 5-10k away. However, by forcing critical alerts for every watch area, you are forced to check and ignore critical alerts a long way away or only set alerts for nearby.
However, the app is stuck in the 2000's for basic functionality. For an app with years of development and so critical for rural lives, it needs more careful thought on what people need to stay safe.
So much more needs to be done. A couple of easy suggestions: A single black burnt area conveys too little information. Just showing all the updates to the burnt area in an cycled animation would be a powerful addition, eg like a rain radar image cycling through changes to the area with timestamps. Without any fancy analysis, this would be incredibly helpful to see the historical direction and velocity of the fire. notwithstanding updates to burn areas are not on regular intervals. eg, it could be made to work by adjusting the animation proportionally to the times of the updates.
Alerts also need more flexibility. It would be helpful for have multiple alerts levels for wider ranges. eg all alerts for 30km out, but critical alerts for 5-10k away. However, by forcing critical alerts for every watch area, you are forced to check and ignore critical alerts a long way away or only set alerts for nearby.
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Poor updating and poor management of this app in general
This app is the worst state in Australia for keeping its info updated. For an app that people in rural Australia rely on for info, the updating is slow to the point of being days behind the actual fire. I use the Victorian one as I am close to the border. It even includes area affected by the fire. I thought the royal commission into the fires would have resolved this issue but I was disappointed. Shame on the government for not making this a federal app…. As it stands it is slow and unreliable. The radio for RFS is a much better source of information than this pile of garbage.
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Distance setting
Agree with all the reviews re resolved etc, and when trying to set watch zone distance max is 50Km’s not matter what I set I’m getting notifications all over Australia? . And when looking at notifications that pop up not matter how many I open and look at ie,all over Australia,when I close the all it still has the notifications symbol ?
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Annoying “Resolved’ notifications
As at least one other person has remarked in the ‘incident resolved’ popup when tapping on a notification from this app. I’m getting the same things (and the Hazards Near Me NSW app has suddenly started doing the same thing, too). That reviewer also commented on this app behaviour substantially undermining the usefulness of the app, and needs to be fixed. The information panel for incidents do in fact show that they are still active.
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