Hawaiʻi Island is the largest in the state, and by the department's own measure, you could lay every other Hawaiian island across it and still have room to spare. Hawaiʻi Fire Department protects more than 4,000 square miles of that terrain, from snow-covered summits to tropical coastline, dense forest, lava fields, and remote backcountry with little or no infrastructure. Twenty fire stations, close to 400 career firefighters, and nearly 100 volunteers cover ground that would challenge a department twice the size.

For most of the department's history, that coverage centered on structural firefighting, EMS, and commercial pre-planning. But as the wildland-urban interface expanded across the island, gaps in operational data became harder to ignore. Water sources, dip sites, firebreaks, access roads, gate codes, and evacuation routes existed, just rarely in one place. Much of it lived in the experience of senior firefighters and company officers who had worked a district for years. When they transferred or retired, that knowledge often left with them.

Crews responding within their own districts could usually rely on memory and printed pre-plans. Mutual aid was a different story. Out-of-district companies arriving on a large incident often had no local familiarity, and finding a water source or reaching a landowner meant phone calls, radio traffic, or waiting on someone who knew the ground. On an island where response times to remote incidents can top 30 minutes, that gap in awareness cost time crews didn't have.

Since bringing on Nova, the department has built what amounts to a living operational map for the island. Each year between January and April, ahead of fire season, crews capture updated orthomosaics and panoramic imagery of high-risk areas, then confirm that contact information, access points, and water sites are current. "Nova has also improved the accuracy of our wildland pre-plans and operational intelligence," Goo said. "Because information can be continuously updated by our personnel and partner agencies, everyone is working from the same current operational picture."

The bigger shift is in how the department uses Nova's icon library. Instead of marking a gate or hydrant as a static point on a map, each icon has become an information hub. "Photos, emergency action plans, contact information, and inspection notes can all be attached directly to map features," Goo explained, "reducing confusion and ensuring firefighters have reliable information when seconds matter." A firefighter selecting a gate icon can confirm access, check the code, identify the responsible landowner, and call them directly, before ever arriving on scene. Knowledge that used to leave with a retiring captain now stays with the department.

That same information becomes a tactical asset once a call comes in. Whether it's selecting the best access route, establishing containment lines, flagging evacuation concerns, or coordinating aircraft and ground resources during a wildfire, command staff pull from the same real-time, location-based picture crews built during pre-planning. That awareness isn't limited to Hawaiʻi Fire Department's own twenty districts. Through partnerships with the Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources, Pōhakuloa Fire Department, and the Hawaiʻi Wildfire Management Organization, multiple agencies now operate from the same common picture, whether the call is a structure fire, a wildland incident, or something in between

"Ultimately, Nova helps us respond faster, operate safer, and make better tactical decisions, regardless of the type of emergency we're responding to," said Fire Prevention Captain Tyson Goo.

The department's goal now is full coverage: every gate, water source, and hazard across all 20 districts, mapped and one click away for every firefighter on the island, not just the ones who know the district by heart.