There are dozens of tools in the Australian emergency management space. They serve very different needs: some help organisations send alerts, some help individuals check safety conditions, some provide raw government data, and some offer structured APIs for developers. This guide maps them all honestly. No rankings. No marketing. Just what exists and what each one does.
These are enterprise platforms that help organisations send alerts and manage incidents internally. They are bought by government agencies, utilities, insurers, and large businesses. They are not sources of raw incident data.
| Platform | HQ | What It Does | Target Market |
|---|---|---|---|
| Everbridge | USA | Powers Australia's Emergency Alert system (location-based SMS/voice). Mass notification and critical event management. | Government, enterprise |
| Whispir | Melbourne | Omnichannel communications (SMS, email, voice, social). Available via Telstra Enterprise as a reseller channel. | Enterprise, emergency services |
| EWN (Aeeris, ASX:AER) | Australia | Private severe weather alerting with in-house meteorologists. API, SMS, and email alerts for storms, bushfires, floods, cyclones. | Insurance, utilities, councils, mining |
| Noggin | Sydney | Integrated resilience platform. Emergency management, business continuity, incident management. Supports AIIMS framework. | Enterprise, government, critical infrastructure |
| AlertMedia | USA | Risk intelligence and emergency mass notification. Employee safety focus. | Enterprise |
| D4H | Ireland | Modular emergency management: incident management, personnel tracking, equipment management, alerting. | Emergency response teams, fire services |
Other platforms in this category include QIT Plus/Guardian IMS (Australian, used by 80+ government organisations), Civica Recover (disaster recovery for NSW councils), and ecoPortal (NZ-based, workplace emergency management).
These are the apps individuals download to check what is happening near them. Most are free. Most show data on a map. Most do not offer structured API access for developers building their own systems.
| App | Coverage | What It Does | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bushfire.io | AU, US, Canada | Live disaster map showing fires, lightning, weather, and warnings. Developer API available at developer.bushfire.io. | Free + paid tiers |
| READI App | National (AU) | All-hazards aggregator pulling from 544 local government sources, state agencies, BOM, and health. AIDR-endorsed. | Free |
| Emergency+ | National (AU) | GPS-enabled Triple Zero (000) calling app. Shares your location with emergency services. Government-backed. | Free |
| MyFireWatch | National (AU) | Satellite hotspot detection map. Run by Landgate (WA) and Edith Cowan University. | Free |
| State emergency apps | Per state | Hazards Near Me (NSW), VicEmergency (VIC), Alert SA (SA), Emergency WA (WA), TasALERT (TAS), ESA ACT (ACT), Secure NT (NT), QLD Fires (QLD). | Free |
For a detailed comparison of state emergency apps, see our bushfire season preparation guide which includes app names, websites, and phone numbers for every state.
This is where the raw data comes from. Government agencies publish emergency incident data through feeds and APIs. The core challenge: every state publishes data in a different format, with different field names, different update intervals, and different reliability. There is no single national feed.
| Source | Jurisdiction | Data Provided | Format |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bureau of Meteorology | Commonwealth | Severe weather warnings, flood watches, tropical cyclone warnings, fire weather forecasts | XML/RSS |
| Geoscience Australia | Commonwealth | Earthquakes, DEA satellite hotspots, tsunami warnings, seismic hazard data | GeoJSON, WFS |
| NEMA | Commonwealth | National coordination. National Joint Common Operating Picture (NJCOP, restricted access). Emergency Alert system. | Not public |
| AIDR | Commonwealth | Knowledge Hub, Disaster Mapper (historical events since 1869), Warnings Republishers guidance documents. | Web |
| State emergency feeds | Per state | Real-time incidents from fire services, SES, ambulance, and police. Includes CAP-AU alerts (WA, ACT), GeoRSS (NSW, VIC), GeoJSON (QLD, SA, NT), and custom formats. | Mixed |
For a detailed breakdown of every government feed by state, see our Australian emergency data feeds guide.
Other countries have built national emergency data infrastructure that Australia does not yet have. These systems show what is possible and where Australia is heading.
| System | Country | What Australia Lacks |
|---|---|---|
| FEMA IPAWS | USA | Public developer API for all national warnings (IPAWS-OPEN). Unified CAP format. 3,296+ developers actively using it. |
| UK Met Office NSWWS | UK | Clean, documented public API for severe weather warnings in standard Atom format. |
| J-Alert | Japan | Sub-minute satellite-to-citizen alerting. 100% municipal coverage since 2004. Covers earthquakes, tsunamis, and missile threats. |
| EU Copernicus EFAS | EU | Continent-wide predictive flood awareness system with standardised data feeds across 27 member states. |
| NZ Emergency Mobile Alerts | New Zealand | Cell broadcast alerting (Australia's AusAlert brings this capability in October 2026). |
FEMA's IPAWS-OPEN is the gold standard. It created a developer ecosystem around emergency data. Australia has no equivalent public API for national warning data. Read more about how Australia compares in our AusAlert developer gap analysis.
These are companies offering structured emergency data via API. This is the category where developers and businesses go when they need to build something with emergency data rather than just view it on a map.
| Platform | Coverage | Focus | API Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| EmergencyAPI | Australia (all states) | All hazards: fires, floods, storms, earthquakes, rescues, hazmat, satellite hotspots, pager dispatches. 33 feeds normalised. | Self-serve REST API. Free tier (500 calls/day). |
| Bushfire.io Developer API | AU, US, Canada | Natural disasters: fires, weather, lightning. Primarily a consumer product with API as secondary offering. | developer.bushfire.io. Pricing not public. |
| Ambee | Global (150+ countries) | Natural disasters at country/region level. Broad coverage, shallow Australian detail. | Enterprise pricing. Free trial (100 calls/day, 15 days). |
| Kontur Event Feed | Global | Major disaster events for insurance and logistics. Aggregates NOAA, NASA, USGS, GDACS. | Enterprise. |
| PredictHQ | Global | Event intelligence platform. Disasters are one of 18+ event categories. Demand forecasting focus. | SDK + API. Enterprise pricing. |
| GDACS | Global | UN/EC sudden-onset disaster alerts and impact estimates. | Free, open. |
Global disaster APIs cover major events (earthquakes, cyclones, large wildfires) but lack granular Australian operational data. Individual fire incidents, traffic hazards, power outages, SES callouts, and dispatch-level pager data are not available through any global API. Bushfire.io is the closest Australian alternative but focuses on natural disasters and is primarily consumer-facing.
EmergencyAPI is not a mass notification platform. It does not help organisations send alerts. It is not a consumer app. It does not have a map for checking fires near your house (though you can build one with the API in about 15 minutes).
EmergencyAPI is a data layer. It takes 33 government feeds from all 8 Australian states and territories, normalises them into a single REST API with a consistent schema, and makes them available to developers, businesses, and researchers.
It complements most of the tools listed above rather than competing with them. Notification platforms can use EmergencyAPI as a data source. Consumer app developers can build on top of it. Researchers can query the historical archive.
Build with Australian emergency data.
EmergencyAPI provides aggregated emergency incident data for informational purposes only. This data is sourced from official government feeds and may be delayed, incomplete, or inaccurate. Do not use this API as a substitute for official emergency warnings. Always refer to your state emergency service for safety-critical decisions.
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