Get Ready (NZ Civil Defence) is a national emergency preparedness website that provides practical guidance for what to do before, during, and after emergencies in New Zealand, including multi-hazard advice and “get prepared” actions for households, workplaces, schools, marae, and communities.
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Get Ready (NZ Civil Defence)
General Information
Get Ready (NEMA - New Zealand) is a national preparedness platform that offers practical instructions for preparing for and responding to multi-risk emergencies (before, during, and after).
The site addresses the problem of low self-sufficiency in a crisis, promoting family/community plans, kits, and supplies (e.g., water and grab bags). It includes specific guidance for vulnerable groups (disabilities, the elderly, children) and pets, with accessible and multilingual resources.
Engagement is primarily informational, with participatory activities such as drills (ShakeOut), community planning, and volunteering. A key element is the integration of alert technologies (Emergency Mobile Alert) and online tools/templates to make preparedness easier and more widespread.
The site frames New Zealand as exposed to many natural hazards that can happen any time, often without warning, and stresses that there may not be time for official warnings, so people should recognise natural warning signs and act quickly.
Hazard Type
Geographical Scope - Nuts
Geographical Scope
Population Size
Population Density
Needs Addressed
The core issue addressed is insufficient household/community readiness for disruptions caused by emergencies (e.g., loss of water/power, evacuation, transport disruption). The site emphasises that in a major emergency, civil defence and emergency services will be focused on those who need them most, so households should be able to cope for several days.
Preparedness is explicitly framed as needing to include people with additional needs, including disabled people, older people, babies/young children, and pets/animals, with dedicated advice and prompts built into planning tools.
The website is operated by the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). NEMA is described as the government lead for emergency management and part of a broader system working with central/local government, communities, iwi, and business.
Regarding institutional hosting: NEMA describes itself as a departmental agency hosted by the Department of Internal Affairs.
There is a national regulatory and planning framework: the Civil Defence Emergency Management Act 2002 and the National CDEM Plan Order 2015, which define the roles and responsibilities of central and local government, emergency services, and lifeline utilities for risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery.
Furthermore, governance is structured with NEMA (the national lead of the system) and regional CDEM Groups (consortia of local authorities) that coordinate activities at the local level.
At the strategic level, there is also the National Disaster Resilience Strategy 2019–2029, which guides the whole-of-society approach to resilience.
Infrastructure preparedness in New Zealand is structured: the civil defense system recognizes and involves lifeline utilities (water, energy, telecommunications, transportation, etc.), which are obliged to maintain essential services to the fullest extent possible, even at reduced capacity, during and after an emergency. This work is not isolated: operational coordination between local/regional government (CDEM Groups) and infrastructure managers is envisaged, supported by guidelines and procedures for continuity and response. On the alert front, the country also has a national Emergency Mobile Alert (cell broadcast) system, designed to send rapid, geolocalized alerts without the need for registration; however, this remains dependent on network coverage and integrity.
To help people and communities:
Understand local hazard risk and warning signs
Prepare to be self-sufficient (at least for the initial period)
Coordinate with whānau/neighbours and practise what to do (e.g., drill + tsunami evacuation walk).
Examples explicitly on the site include:
- Web guidance + templates (online household plan, downloadable templates, workplace plan resources).
- Preparedness drills (New Zealand ShakeOut as a self-run drill).
- Community planning prompts (encouraging community emergency plans and talking with others).
- Staying informed channels (radio, council/CDEM social media/websites; NEMA channels).
- Accessible and multilingual formats (NZSL, audio, large print, Easy Read, braille; multiple languages).
In New Zealand, citizens exert most influence before emergencies: CDEM Groups must conduct public consultation when preparing plans and defining priorities and the "acceptable" risk level. During an emergency, however, operational decision-making is centralized: decisions are made by the Controller, and the political/elected leadership acts under his authority for the duration of the event. Overall, therefore, public influence is highest in preparedness and lowest in response.
At Get Ready, capacity building is primarily achieved through practical and repeatable tools: guides and templates for building a family/community plan, including specific needs and animals. It also promotes long-term empowerment through self-run exercises like ShakeOut (practicing what to do in an earthquake/tsunami). It also enhances local capacity through guidance on community hubs/Civil Defense Centers and volunteering, strengthening emergency support networks.
Vulnerable Groups
Governance
Emergency Preparedness
Infrastructure Readiness
Engagement Level
Empowerment Level
Implementation
- “Trust your danger sense” positioning: act on natural warning signs, not only official warnings.
- Multi-hazard structure (earthquakes, floods, heat, landslides, space weather, storms, tsunami, volcanic activity, wildfires, etc.).
- Clear minimum preparedness expectations (e.g., water/food supplies and practical “grab bag” lists).
- Strong accessibility approach (audio, NZSL, Easy Read, large print, braille) and multi-language availability
There are several languages on the site.
NEMA operates the Get Ready website. The site (and NEMA’s institutional pages) describe NEMA as providing leadership across risk reduction, readiness, response, and recovery, including managing central government response/recovery functions for national emergencies and supporting local/regional emergency management
NEMA is the national body that provides leadership across the full emergency management cycle—risk reduction, readiness, response and recovery—and it manages central government response and recovery functions for national emergencies, while also supporting local and regional emergencies. NEMA describes its system role as steward, operator and assurer of the emergency management system, working with central and local government, communities, iwi and businesses to ensure responses and recoveries are coordinated and effective
- NEMA (operator/manager of the website; manager of ShakeOut 2025)
- Civil Defence Emergency Management (CDEM) Groups and local councils (as key sources for local updates and hazard context)
- ShakeOut collaborators/supporters named on the site: Natural Hazards Commission Toka Tū Ake, New Zealand Red Cross, MetService.
- Community volunteering pathways via local councils, plus groups like Volunteer Fire, St John, and (where established) New Zealand Response Teams.
For households, the site presents a step sequence:
- Talk about likely impacts
- Work out supplies
- Make a plan
- Tailor the plan (include everyone)
- Stay informed
- Make the home safer
For community involvement, it promotes: - Making a community emergency plan and connecting locally
- Participating in ShakeOut (Drop, Cover, Hold; tsunami evacuation walk if in a zone)
- Volunteering via council/organisations
It is an information service operated by NEMA (a national agency), and is therefore continuously supported by internal institutional resources/capacity. Some related activities (e.g., ShakeOut) also involve collaborations/sponsors/supporters, but this concerns specific campaigns rather than the core of the site. In operational terms for the end user, many actions are self-managed (e.g., ShakeOut) and based on downloadable templates/tools.
INFO NOT AVAILABLE - Household preparedness is framed around being able to cope for “three days or more” and storing water for at least three days.
Experience of the Implementing Organisation in DRM
Target Audience
Resources Required
Timeframe & Phases
Participation Results
For Emergency Mobile Alert testing, the site reports evaluation outputs such as:
Public feedback used for improvements over time
Survey-based indicators improving over years, including an example metric reported for 2022 and public perceptions of EMA effectiveness.
For wider “Get Ready” programme lessons learned: INFO NOT AVAILABLE
For the Emergency Mobile Alert system, the site describes continuous improvement using public feedback submissions from nationwide tests to improve the system over multiple years.
More broadly (e.g., delivery challenges, barriers, implementation adaptations across the entire website programme): INFO NOT AVAILABLE.
INFO NOT AVAILABLE (the site provides preparedness advice, but does not present an explicit implementation risk register/mitigation plan for the programme itself).
Risk & Mitigation Plan
Scalability and Sustainability
INFO NOT AVAILABLE (no explicit sustainability framework described)
INFO NOT AVAILABLE
Key technology-enabled components explicitly described include:
- Emergency Mobile Alert (location-based alerts to phones without opt-in/app).
- Online planning tools and downloadable templates for household/work plans.
- Multi-format accessibility (audio, NZSL, large print, Easy Read, braille) and multilingual delivery.
- Use of official digital channels (website/social media references) for staying informed.
INFO NOT AVAILABLE
INFO NOT AVAILABLE
For overall "lessons learned" on the entire Get Ready program, INFO NOT AVAILABLE but Regularly test the system: annual nationwide tests are presented as necessary to verify that the alerting is working well and to measure its effectiveness over time.
A second point is the logic of continuous improvement: the website encourages feedback and specifies that the information collected is used to make ongoing improvements to the alert platform.
Effectiveness also depends on simple but critical social behaviors: if you receive an alert, it is recommended to notify those around you.