Complete Guide to Australian Emergency Data Feeds

There is no single Australian emergency data feed. Each state runs its own system. Some use GeoJSON, some use GeoRSS, some use ArcGIS REST, some use RSS with custom XML, and some use CAP-AU (Common Alerting Protocol, Australian Profile). Field names differ. Coordinate systems differ. Some return epoch timestamps in local time, some in UTC.

If you want national coverage, you need to write and maintain parsers for every single feed. When a state changes their API (which happens without notice), your parser breaks. This is weeks of integration work before you can build anything useful on top of it.

This guide documents every feed so you can make an informed decision about whether to build the integration yourself or use a unified API like EmergencyAPI.

Feed Details

The NSW Rural Fire Service publishes a GeoJSON feed of current incidents. This is one of the better-documented feeds in Australia. The data includes incident type, status, alert level, and polygon geometry for fire boundaries.

Format: GeoJSON FeatureCollection
Update interval: ~2 minutes
Auth: None (public)
Timestamps: 12-hour AM/PM format with local timezone

Limitations

Timestamps use a non-standard 12-hour format that requires custom parsing. Alert levels use NSW-specific terminology. Only covers RFS incidents (not NSW SES floods or police).

Feed Details

Emergency Management Victoria provides one of the most comprehensive feeds. It covers all emergency types (fire, flood, storm, rescue, hazmat) through a single GeoJSON endpoint. Separate feeds exist for CFA fire danger ratings, EMV fire-specific, and EMV flood-specific data.

Format: GeoJSON FeatureCollection
Update interval: ~2 minutes
Auth: None (public)
Timestamps: DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS (24-hour, local time)

Limitations

The feed occasionally includes incidents from other agencies with different field structures. Fire danger ratings are on a separate endpoint from incidents.

Feed Details

Queensland Fire and Emergency Services publishes all incident types through their ESCAD (Emergency Services Computer Aided Dispatch) system. This includes structure fires, rescues, MVAs, hazmat, and bushfires.

Format: GeoJSON
Update interval: ~2 minutes
Auth: None (public)
Timestamps: Compact UTC format (YYYYMMDDHHmmss)

Limitations

The timestamp format is non-standard and requires custom parsing. The compact UTC format is unusual among Australian feeds.

Feed Details

SA runs three separate feeds through SAFECOM: CFS (bushfires), MFS (metro fire), and SES (floods, storms, rescues). All use ArcGIS REST FeatureServer endpoints hosted on geohub.sa.gov.au. SA also has pager feeds from urgmsg.net that provide dispatch-level data with exact addresses and units dispatched.

Format: ArcGIS REST JSON (not GeoJSON, requires conversion)
Update interval: ~1 minute
Auth: None (public ArcGIS)
Timestamps: Epoch milliseconds in ACST/ACDT local time (not UTC)

Limitations

The biggest gotcha: timestamps are epoch milliseconds but in local Adelaide time (UTC+9:30 or UTC+10:30 during daylight saving), not UTC. If you treat them as UTC epochs, your timestamps will be 9.5-10.5 hours in the future. You need to subtract the timezone offset before converting. ArcGIS JSON also uses a different geometry format than GeoJSON, requiring conversion.

Feed Details

WA DFES provides two feeds: incidents via SLIP (Shared Location Information Platform) ArcGIS FeatureServer, and warnings via CAP-AU RSS. The incidents feed requires a free SLIP account and Esri token. Warnings are public.

Format: ArcGIS REST GeoJSON (incidents), CAP-AU RSS (warnings)
Update interval: ~1 minute
Auth: SLIP Esri token (incidents), none (warnings)
Timestamps: Epoch milliseconds in AWST local time (UTC+8, no DST)

Limitations

Same local-time epoch issue as SA. The SLIP access requires registration and a 1-year token that must be renewed. The legacy api.emergency.wa.gov.au API endpoints are not designated data feeds per DFES (April 2026).

Feed Details

Tasmania Fire Service publishes incidents via TasALERT RSS feed with GeoRSS point elements. The feed covers fire incidents across the state.

Format: RSS with GeoRSS
Update interval: ~5 minutes
Auth: None (public)
Timestamps: Standard RSS date format

Limitations

Event type information is embedded inside the description field as plain text (e.g. "TYPE: Structure Fire"), not in a dedicated field. Requires regex extraction. Geographic coordinates are provided as GeoRSS points, not GeoJSON.

Feed Details

ACT Emergency Services Agency publishes a JSON feed of current incidents. Covers all incident types in the ACT region.

Format: JSON (custom schema)
Update interval: ~2 minutes
Auth: None (public)
Timestamps: "DD Mon YYYY HH:MM:SS.mmm" format

Limitations

Coordinates are provided as string values in [lat, lng] order, which is the opposite of the GeoJSON [lng, lat] standard. Requires swapping. The timestamp format includes milliseconds and uses abbreviated month names.

Feed Details

NT Police, Fire and Emergency Services publishes incidents via a GeoJSON feed. Covers fires, rescues, and other emergencies across the territory.

Format: GeoJSON
Update interval: ~2 minutes
Auth: None (public)
Timestamps: ISO 8601 (one of the few feeds that does this correctly)

Limitations

Limited metadata compared to other states. Incident type mapping can be inconsistent.

Geoscience Australia (Earthquakes)

GA publishes Australian earthquake data via GeoJSON. Covers magnitude 2.0+ events nationally. Data is authoritative and well-structured with standard ISO timestamps.

Digital Earth Australia (Satellite Hotspots)

DEA provides satellite fire detection from multiple sensors (AHI/Himawari-8, VIIRS, MODIS). Detects fires from space before ground reporting. Accessible via WFS with CQL filtering. High volume (60,000+ detections per 24 hours), requires confidence filtering to reduce noise.

Bureau of Meteorology (Weather Warnings)

BOM publishes severe weather warnings via WMO CAP feed. Covers floods, wind, severe weather, frost, thunderstorms, and surf warnings. Licence status for commercial use is complex and requires verification before ingestion.

1. Timestamp formats

Every state uses a different timestamp format. NSW uses 12-hour AM/PM. QLD uses compact UTC. SA and WA return epoch milliseconds in local time (not UTC). VIC uses DD/MM/YYYY 24-hour. ACT uses "DD Mon YYYY HH:MM:SS.mmm". Only NT and GA use standard ISO 8601.

2. Coordinate systems

Most feeds use WGS84 (EPSG:4326) but coordinate order varies. GeoJSON uses [lng, lat], but ACT returns [lat, lng] as strings. ArcGIS feeds from SA return coordinates in a different JSON structure that requires conversion to GeoJSON.

3. Event type naming

There is no standard taxonomy. NSW calls it "Bush Fire", QLD calls it "BUSHFIRE", VIC calls it "fire", SA uses numeric codes. Normalising these into consistent categories requires a lookup table covering 100+ raw values.

4. Feed reliability

Government feeds go down without notice. State emergency websites are maintained by small teams and infrastructure varies widely. You need retry logic, circuit breakers, and stale detection to build anything production-grade on top of them.

EmergencyAPI normalises all 30 feeds from all 8 states into one GeoJSON schema. Consistent field names, consistent timestamps (ISO 8601 UTC), consistent coordinates ([lng, lat]), consistent event types. One integration covers the entire country.

The poller handles all the parsing, timezone conversion, coordinate swapping, event type normalisation, retry logic, and stale detection. You get clean data via a REST API with filtering by state, event type, severity, bounding box, and proximity.

PostGIS spatial clustering groups nearby incidents into events with boundary polygons, affected suburbs, and auto-generated summaries. Access clustered intelligence via the /v1/events endpoint. 300 satellite dots become "1 fire event, 2,400 hectares, 6 suburbs."

Free tier at 500 API calls per day. No credit card required.