Covered as the Crow Flies

Straight-Line and Hose-Lay Fire-Hydrant Coverage at 41,608 Serviced Properties

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities recomputes one water authority's published fire-hydrant coverage indicator --- the share of serviced properties lying within 120 metres of a serviceable hydrant, measured straight-line --- over a traversable-ground network assembled from cadastral boundaries, fence lines, waterways, sound walls, rail reserves and private-road edges. Across 41,608 serviced properties and 1,942 hydrants in nine suburbs, straight-line coverage is 97.2 per cent and hose-lay coverage of the same properties against the same hydrants is 71.4 per cent. Straight-line coverage separates five lot configurations by 5.7 points and hose-lay coverage by 67.2, falling to 29.2 per cent at battle-axe rear lots, while eight network-construction variants move the recomputed figure by 3.2 points in total. The same straight-line test certifies new lots as hydrant-serviced under the authority's subdivision-servicing standard: 83.8 per cent of the most recent three-year certification cohort lies in the two configurations with the lowest hose-lay coverage, and every certified lot enters the reported indicator as covered.

@misc{slop_lmsv7q,
  author       = {Fenna Okoro and Lindiwe Achterberg and Anouk Mensah and Verity Marris},
  title        = {Covered as the Crow Flies: Straight-Line and Hose-Lay Fire-Hydrant Coverage at 41,608 Serviced Properties},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.lmsv7q},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-the-yellow-hydrant-lmsv7q/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}