Can technology make good fire prevention more likely?

01 It is not about bad intentions

Most people do not want to be careless with fire.

A board chair does not want deviations left lying. A manager does not want employees who don't know the routines. A farmer does not want faults that raise the risk. A building owner does not want important knowledge to disappear when employees, suppliers or the use of the building change.

And yet it happens.

It was one of the first things we realised in our work on Project Zero:

Fire prevention competes with everyday life, not with bad intentions.

That changes the question. Instead of asking why people don't care enough, we can ask why something they genuinely care about is still so easy to postpone, misunderstand or forget.

02 When the risk feels distant

The risk can feel far away. Many people go through their whole lives without experiencing a serious fire up close.

“There has never been a fire here.”

And when something rarely happens, what is urgent right now easily wins over what could become serious later.

Awareness of risk is not constant. It has to be maintained.

Read moreIs the weakest point really awareness?→

03 Information is not the same as action

Access is not attention.Information is not understanding.A reminder is not a habit.A task is not a solved problem.

That is why we don't believe the answer is simply more notifications.

Research from other fields shows that digital measures can influence behaviour, but it also shows why it is too simple to reduce this to reminders. Systematic reviews of digital behaviour change interventions point to, among other things, goals and planning, feedback and follow-up, self-monitoring, knowledge support and social support. At the same time, the research on simple reminders alone is far less clear.

It is not fire research, and we will not pretend it is.

Go deeperThe research behind the behaviour question

Digital behaviour change interventions have been studied in several fields other than fire prevention. Systematic reviews show that such measures can support some kinds of behaviour change, but the effect varies with the audience, the context and the mechanisms used.

In a systematic review from 2021, goals and planning, feedback and monitoring, knowledge support and social support were among the most frequently used behaviour change techniques. A more recent meta-analysis from 2025 found a positive effect of standalone digital interventions on physical activity, but rated the evidence for this outcome as low.

Reminders alone are a weaker basis. A systematic review from 2019 found that the evidence for adding cue reminders to measures against health risks was unclear.

This is not evidence that FireHub changes fire prevention behaviour. It is transferable research that supports testing the question empirically rather than answering it with assumptions.

04 The building stays. The people change

A building can stand for centuries. The people around it do not.

Project Zero puts the problem simply:

The building endures, while the human system meant to understand it is constantly being replaced.

Read moreThe building stays. The people change→

05 What do we actually know?

Another question follows us through almost everything we build:

What do we actually have grounds to say?

That is why we use a simple principle:

Evidence before assertion.

Evidens før påstand.

FireHub would rather show uncertainty than create false security.

Read moreWhen AI is the system→

06 Can technology make the right action easier?

It is a question we are still working on.

Not whether technology can make people obedient. Not whether AI can take over responsibility. And not whether yet another app can get people to press more buttons.

The question is whether technology can make it easier to understand what matters, right when it is relevant.

Can a finding become understandable before it disappears into a report? Can the right person understand why something concerns them? Can a deviation become a concrete measure? Can the measure be followed through to documented closure? Can a new board understand why the previous board made a decision? Can the professional still own the professional judgement while technology removes the unnecessary work around it?

1. Finding
2. Measure
3. Follow-up
4. History

This is where FireHub comes in.

Ordinary systems store and organise. FireHub understands and orchestrates.

That means: FireHub reads what you have, sees what belongs together, and says who should do what next.

FireHub suggests. People confirm.

The goal is not that people should have to go around actively remembering fire all the time. Technology can take on more of the work of keeping things connected and making the right information relevant when it is needed. Then people can use their attention to understand, assess and act.

Can technology help the right behaviour become normal without turning risk into a constant source of worry?

Technology is a means.

Human action is the point.

Related readingPoints are not the point→

07 If everyone is to take part, participation cannot be priced out

Project Zero has also shaped how we think about the business model.

If good prevention depends on the board, employees, tenants, residents, suppliers and other relevant people actually being able to take part, it makes little sense to turn participation into an ongoing cost per person.

That is why FireHub has a simple rule:

No cost per seat. Everyone can take part.

And that is why FireHub Personal is free for private individuals.

At the same time, FireHub is a commercial business.

That is deliberate.

If the technology is to be developed over time, be secure and be available to many, the business that builds it must also be sustainable.

So the interesting question is not whether FireHub should make money.

The interesting question is whether the way we make money pulls in the same direction as the problem we are trying to solve.

08 How do we know if it works?

The hardest question comes after the technology is built.

It is not enough that we ourselves think the solution is better.

Before we can say anything about reduced risk, there are more concrete things we can examine.

Does responsibility become clearer? Does the time from finding to clarification go down? Is follow-up actually carried out? Is work better documented when it is closed? Does the knowledge survive a change of board or a change of supplier? Do unresolved matters stay visible? Do the same problems recur less often? Do more of the people who actually have a role in the building take part?

• Time to clarification
• Responsibility taken on
• Traceable closure
• Recurrence
• Participation
• Continuity

This is what we want to be able to measure.

Only then can we ask the bigger questions.

Project Zero has a simple rule for this:

We will not claim a documented effect before the evidence exists.

So for now, these are questions.

Not results.

That is exactly why they are interesting.

Go deeperWhat do we actually want to measure?

Before a claim of reduced risk can be defended, there are more direct and observable questions:

• how long does it take from a finding to the first action?
• how long does it take to reach clarification?
• is responsibility actually accepted?
• how many relevant matters are left without an owner?
• how many measures get traceable closure?
• how often does the same type of unresolved matter come back?
• how well does the history survive a change of role or person?
• do the roles that actually affect prevention take part?

The Project Zero test is:

1. Which preventive behaviour do we want to improve?
2. Is the expected effect observable?
3. Can it be measured without surveillance or false precision?
4. Does the mechanism reduce the friction in the right action?
5. Is the claimed effect in proportion to the evidence we actually have?

09 We cannot build this alone

Project Zero began as an attempt to ask the fundamental questions before we decided what FireHub should look like.

That work is not finished because the product exists.

On the contrary, we believe the most interesting questions start now.

Fire and rescue services know something we don't.

Professionals know something we don't.

Municipalities, property owners and managers, suppliers, businesses, boards, research communities and people who work with prevention every day have experience we don't have.

We want to learn from them.

Not to get anyone to confirm that we are right.

But to find out what can actually be done better.

And how we can see that it actually makes a difference.

Others will be able to do things we cannot.

That is not a weakness in Project Zero.

It is how we believe it should be built.

If technology can help more people do a little more right, a little earlier and a little more often, without taking responsibility away from them, then it is a project we believe is worth continuing to work on.

Would you like to take part?

Take part in the work↗︎