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Compliance & Governance

Compliance & Governance

Last updated: 19 April 2026


Who We Are

EmergencyAPI is operated by SEY Solutions (ABN 13 531 353 123), a registered Australian business.

We aggregate real-time emergency incident and warning data from 28 official Australian government feeds plus national sources (Geoscience Australia, satellite hotspot data) into a single standardised API.


We Operate as a Warnings Republisher

Under the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) framework, EmergencyAPI is classified as a "Privately owned warning publisher or disseminator". The same category includes global digital platforms (Google, Facebook), insurers providing customer alerts, and private weather services.

This designation was confirmed in a formal reply from Dr Richard Hammond, Senior Policy Officer and CAP-AU Custodian at the Bureau of Meteorology, on 16 April 2026. AIDR publishes a guidance document for operators in our category, the Warnings Republishers Companion (AIDR 2021, CC BY 4.0), which lists twelve operational obligations.

This page documents our posture against each of those obligations, plus adjacent concerns (CAP-AU standards alignment, agency engagement, data licensing, security, privacy) that matter to customers evaluating us.


The 12 AIDR Obligations: Our Status

Our self-audit against the twelve obligations in the AIDR Warnings Republishers Companion, reviewed as of 19 April 2026:

#ObligationStatus
1Establish prior relationship with statutory provider (MoU or informal)Partial
2Platform robust under high demandSatisfied
3Warnings are current and republished in a timely mannerSatisfied
4Preserve intent of warning (wording and spatial representation)Partial
5Include original source, date, and time of publicationSatisfied
6Republish revisions, updates, and de-escalationsPartial
7Indicate unofficial sources clearlySatisfied
8Verify unofficial information against official sourcesPartial
9Remove, retract, or correct inaccurate content promptlyPartial
10CAP-AU-STD compliance considerationSatisfied
11Comply with relevant legislation, regulations, privacy and data lawsSatisfied
12Understand legal responsibilities and liability as a republisherSatisfied

Summary: 7 fully satisfied, 5 partial. Closure work on the remaining obligations is actively underway (certainty-field audit, explicit upstream-cancellation detection, unofficial-source cross-check policy, retraction mechanism).


CAP-AU and OASIS Standards

EmergencyAPI is designed to conform to OASIS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) v1.2, the international XML standard for public warning messages, and its Australian profile (CAP-AU-STD, maintained by the Bureau of Meteorology).

  • Response schema maps cleanly to CAP-AU concepts (severity, urgency, certainty, eventType, geometry).
  • CAP-AU-formatted responses are available via ?format=cap-au on the incidents endpoint.
  • Native CAP-AU ingestion from WA DFES and ACT ESA without lossy transformation.
  • Schema designed to the underlying OASIS v1.2 baseline per Dr Hammond's guidance. OASIS is the permanent international standard underneath the Australian profile.
  • We monitor the 12-month CAP-AU review cycle announced by BOM in April 2026.

Agency Engagement

We maintain a transparent paper trail of our engagement with every agency whose data we consume. Customers can verify our standing directly with the relevant agency using the contacts below.

Agency / BodyJurisdictionStatusBasis
WA DFESWestern AustraliaApprovedCommercial use approved by Tim Vella (Project Manager, NextGen Warnings Project, DFES) on 15 April 2026. SLIP designated-feed access granted 16 April 2026.
BOM CAP-AU CustodianCommonwealthEngagedFormal correspondence with Dr Richard Hammond, Senior Policy Officer. Governance-level engagement on CAP-AU alignment and republisher status, ongoing since 14 April 2026.
NT PFESNorthern TerritoryProgressingNT Open Data team responded 17 April 2026 confirming they are making internal enquiries with the PFES business area regarding our use.
QLD QFDQueenslandOpen licenceQueensland Fire Department data published under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Commercial use explicitly permitted. Attribution satisfied via our /api/v1/attribution endpoint.
ACT ESAAustralian Capital TerritoryOpen licenceACT Emergency Services Agency data published under CC BY 4.0. Commercial use explicitly permitted.
Geoscience AustraliaCommonwealthOpen licenceGA earthquake data published under CC BY 4.0. National seismology data explicitly open for commercial use.
NSW RFSNew South WalesPending replyWritten request for commercial redistribution permission sent to NSW Rural Fire Service media mailbox on 13 April 2026. Awaiting reply. AIDR Warnings Republishers framework referenced in the request.
VIC EMVVictoriaPending replyDeveloper-access application sent to Emergency Management Victoria on 13 April 2026. Awaiting reply. VIC EMV data is CC BY 3.0 AU once access is granted.
SA SAFECOMSouth AustraliaPending replyCommercial licence request sent to SAFECOM on 13 April 2026 covering CFS, MFS, and SES agency feeds. Awaiting reply.
TAS TasALERTTasmaniaPending replyLicensing clarification request sent to TasALERT on 13 April 2026. Underlying data is CC BY 4.0. Awaiting written acknowledgement.
AIDR (AFAC)NationalPending replyIntroduction as a republisher and AWS hazard-icon usage inquiry prepared. Sending imminently.
Status legend
  • Approved. Written or verbal approval received.
  • Engaged. Formal governance-level engagement.
  • Progressing. Internal agency enquiries underway.
  • Open licence. Data published under a licence that explicitly permits our use.
  • Pending reply. Written request sent, awaiting reply.

Data Sources and Licensing

Full per-source attribution, including the licence under which each feed is provided and whether the source is an official statutory agency or a community-decoded feed, is available at our attribution endpoint:

emergencyapi.com/api/v1/attribution

Every source carries an official: boolean flag. Statutory government feeds return true. A small number of community-decoded sources (SA pager dispatches via urgmsg.net, which decode public GRN radio transmissions under the Australian Radiocommunications Act) return false. Customers who need statutory-only data can filter on that flag.


Security Posture

  • External security audit: A grade (90/100). SSL/TLS 100, Security Headers 85, Supply Chain 95, Best Practices 100.
  • Authentication: API keys (SHA-256 hashed at rest). IP-based rate limiting on auth routes.
  • Transport: HTTPS enforced via Vercel. HSTS, CSP, and X-Frame-Options headers applied.
  • Infrastructure: Self-healing container pipeline on dedicated hardware. Supabase Pro database with daily automated backups and 7-day retention.

Privacy

We comply with the Australian Privacy Act 1988. Our full Privacy Policy is at /privacy, including how we collect, store, and protect account information and API usage data.


Legal Posture and Liability

Our Terms of Service at /terms include warnings-republisher-specific clauses aligned with the AIDR framework, including:

  • Explicit disclaimer that EmergencyAPI is not a substitute for official emergency warnings.
  • Commitment to best-effort propagation of upstream revisions, updates, and de-escalations (ToS §5).
  • Explicit disclosure that community-decoded pager feeds are not statutory sources (ToS §13).
  • Limitation of liability under Australian law (ToS §6).

Review and Update Cadence

This page is reviewed quarterly. The next scheduled review is 19 July 2026. Re-audit is also triggered by:

  • Any new AIDR Companion version.
  • CAP-AU standard revision (the current 12-month review cycle is in progress).
  • Material changes to our feed sources or ingest posture.
  • Any regulatory inquiry or incident.

Contact for Compliance Inquiries

For procurement, compliance verification, or partnership conversations:

SEY Solutions

ABN: 13 531 353 123

Email: jjtdempsey@gmail.com

Web: emergencyapi.com