From what you saw to something that has to be answered.
The app takes about a minute to use. What happens after that is the part that matters.
01 — Record
Photograph or film what you see, while you are standing there.
Images, video, or both, with a short description of what you are looking at. Video earns its place when the thing you are recording is moving or continuous — water running, machinery working, the extent of a slip as you pan across it. The app captures where and when on its own, so you do not have to remember later.
Then add what you know. The app has fields for the things that turn a photo into a record an agency can act on:
- Lot number — the legal parcel the site sits on.
- Land boundaries — whether it is a primary boundary, a road margin, a waterway.
- Land owner — who holds it, if you know.
None of these are compulsory. A photograph with a date and a location is already worth more than a complaint with neither.
Sample record
Observation Petition Illustrative — not live data
02 — Publish
It goes public, on the map and in the feed.
Your record joins the live map of Aotearoa and the public feed, where members and non-members alike can see it. It sits alongside every other record from that catchment, that region, that season.
Alongside posts there are petitions — where a pattern has built up enough that it is worth asking a lot of people to put their name to it.
You sign up with an email address, which is never shown publicly. Looking at the map does not require an account at all.
03 — Act
The evidence goes to people who can do something with it.
Records are used to brief journalists, to support submissions, and to put specific, dated, located questions to councils and agencies. A photograph attached to a parcel and a time is much harder to file away than a phone call.
Where a pattern is clear, it becomes a story. Where a story lands, things change — that has been the pattern in New Zealand environmental campaigning for decades, and it is the one we are building for.
What makes a record worth something.
Five habits that turn an ordinary photo into evidence someone can act on.
- Wide, then close One frame showing where you are — the road, the bend in the river, the fence line — and one showing the thing itself. Context is what stops a photo being dismissed as “could be anywhere”.
- Something for scale A fence post, a vehicle, a person. Without it, nobody can tell whether a slump is ankle-deep or two metres deep.
- Film the moving parts Stills are enough for a scar on a hillside. Use video where the thing itself moves — a discharge running, a machine working, the noise. Pan slowly and keep it short.
- Say what you saw Plain description, not conclusions. “Brown water entering the stream below the culvert, about 30 metres of bank collapsed” is stronger than “illegal discharge”.
- Go back The same spot a month later is the single most useful thing you can add. Change over time is the argument no single photograph can make.
Start with one photograph.
Free to download, free to use, free to contribute to.
iOS 15.1 and later · Android · Aotearoa New Zealand