Terms of Service

1. Agreement

By accessing or using the EmergencyAPI service, you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service. If you do not agree to these terms, do not use the service.

2. The Service

EmergencyAPI provides aggregated real-time emergency incident data from official Australian government emergency service feeds, plus a few clearly-flagged community-decoded sources (see section 13). The data covers bushfires, floods, storms, vehicle accidents, ambulance, rescue, and other emergency incidents across all 8 states and territories.

The service is provided for informational purposes only.

3. Not a Substitute for Official Emergency Warnings

Official emergency services include: CFS (SA), RFS (NSW), CFA (VIC), DFES (WA), ESA (ACT), TFS (TAS), PFES (NT), and QFD (QLD).

4. Data Accuracy

Emergency data is sourced from official government feeds and community pager feeds. This data may be:

• Delayed (feeds are polled at intervals between 30 seconds and 30 minutes)
• Incomplete (not all incidents may be reported in all feeds)
• Inaccurate (source data may contain errors in location, status, or details)
• Temporarily unavailable (feeds may go down without notice)

We make reasonable efforts to keep data current and accurate, but we cannot guarantee the completeness or correctness of any data served through the API.

5. Revisions, Updates, and Retractions

EmergencyAPI operates as a warnings republisher under the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience (AIDR) guidelines. We commit to reflecting upstream changes issued by statutory warning providers on a best-effort basis, subject to the polling intervals disclosed at /v1/status:

• Revisions and updates: when an upstream agency updates a warning, the next successful poll will refresh the record in our API. The timestamps.updatedfield reflects the agency's update time.
• De-escalations: when an upstream agency cancels, downgrades, or marks a warning as ended, we propagate that change on the next poll. Incidents that upstream agencies stop publishing are marked with an is_retracted flag and remain visible for 24 hours before archival. Use ?include_retracted=true to retrieve retracted incidents.
• Corrections: if we discover an inaccurate or inappropriate record in our dataset, we will remove, correct, or flag it as soon as practicable, and document any material correction in our changelog.

None of the above commitments constitute a service-level guarantee. The upstream agency is always the authoritative source for current warning status.

6. Limitation of Liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Australian law, SEY Solutions is not liable for any loss, damage, injury, or death resulting from decisions made based on data provided by this API.

This includes, but is not limited to: property damage, personal injury, financial loss, missed evacuations, or reliance on delayed or inaccurate data.

The service is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied.

7. User Accounts

• One account per person. Do not create multiple accounts.
• You must provide accurate information when registering.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account and API key.
• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account.

8. Fair Use

The free tier allows 500 requests per day. You agree to:

• Stay within your rate limit
• Not abuse, overload, or attempt to disrupt the service
• Not scrape or bulk-download data to build a competing service
• Not use the API for any unlawful purpose
• Not redistribute raw API responses as your own data product without attribution

9. API Keys

Your API key is private to your account. You agree to:

• Keep your API key secret
• Not share your API key with others
• Not commit your API key to public code repositories
• Notify us immediately if your key is compromised

We reserve the right to revoke any API key that is being misused or shared.

10. Rate Limits

Rate limits are enforced to keep the service fair and available for everyone. Current limits are 500 requests per day on the free tier.

We may adjust rate limits at any time. Paid tiers with higher limits will be introduced in the future. Existing free tier users will be notified of any changes to their limits.

11. Uptime and Availability

We do not guarantee any level of uptime or availability. The service is provided on a best-effort basis. Downtime may occur due to maintenance, infrastructure issues, or upstream feed outages.

We will make reasonable efforts to keep the service running and to communicate about planned maintenance.

12. Data Sources and Attribution

Emergency data is sourced from official Australian government feeds and is provided under Creative Commons (CC BY) licensing where applicable. We attribute all data sources.

Full attribution details are available at the /v1/attribution endpoint, including an official flag per source so consumers can distinguish statutory government feeds from community-decoded sources. If you redistribute data from this API, you must include appropriate attribution to both EmergencyAPI and the original data sources.

13. Community-Decoded Data (Pager Feeds)

A small number of our sources are community-decoded rather than official government feeds. These currently include the SA pager dispatches (SAAS ambulance, CFS/MFS, SES, and aerial firefighting) ingested via urgmsg.net. This data comes from public GRN radio transmissions decoded by volunteer operators and is not issued or endorsed by the respective statutory agencies.

• Community-decoded sources carry official: false in the /v1/attribution response.
• These records may contain transcription errors, duplications, or ambiguous location data.
• Do not treat community-decoded dispatches as equivalent to an official warning from the relevant agency.
• For statutory incident records, filter responses or consumers by theofficial: true sources listed in the attribution endpoint.

Community pager feeds are included because they surface useful dispatch-level context that is not otherwise available. Their legal status is well-precedented (public radio is legally scannable under the Radiocommunications Act), but the unverified nature of the data is material information for any downstream use.

14. Termination

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate any account that violates these terms, abuses the service, or uses it for unlawful purposes. We will attempt to provide notice before termination where reasonable.

You can delete your account at any time through your account settings or by emailing jack@seysolutions.com.au.

15. Changes to Terms

We may update these terms from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page will always reflect the most recent version. Continued use of the service after changes constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

16. Governing Law

These terms are governed by the laws of South Australia, Australia. Any disputes arising from the use of this service will be subject to the jurisdiction of the courts of South Australia.

17. Contact

If you have questions about these terms: