IPAWS Archived Alerts

The Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) is a modernization of the nation's alert and warning infrastructure that unifies the United States' Emergency Alert System (EAS), Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Weather Radio, and other public alerting systems implemented as a set of Web services. Organized and managed by FEMA, the system supports alert origination by Federal, state, local, territorial and tribal officials, and subsequent dissemination to the public using a range of national and local alerting systems. This dataset contains recent*, historic, and archived IPAWS Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) v1.2 messages from June 2012 to the present including date, time, event code (examples listed below), city, county, joint agency, police, law enforcement, Collaborative Operating Group (COG), State(s), locality, territory or tribe. It can be used to capture and analyze historic and archived messages. *The dataset is published with a twenty-four (24) hour delay to reduce the risk of being confused with an active alert received from the live IPAWS feed. The most recent record will reflect the alert(s) sent twenty-four (24) hours ago (if such records exist). For example, if an alert originator sent an alert at 1459GMT on June 1st and sent a different alert at 1600GMT on June 2nd, these alerts will not be visible in the dataset until 1459GMT on June 2nd and 1600GMT June 3rd respectively. Information on signing up for receiving active alerts can be found at https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integrated-public-alert-warning-system . To request access to alerts issued through IPAWS or for a list of companies with access to the IPAWS All-Hazards Information Feed, email ipaws@fema.dhs.gov. The data elements within the CAP messages are well documented and can be found in the following technical document: https://docs.oasis-open.org/emergency/cap/v1.2/CAP-v1.2-os.pdf See also: IPAWS Architecture - https://www.fema.gov/pdf/emergency/ipaws/architecture_diagram.pdf IPAWS Overview - https://www.fema.gov/emergency-managers/practitioners/integrated-public-alert-warning-system This is raw, unedited data with no personally identifiable information from the IPAWS Alert Aggregator from June 2012 to the present created by over 1450 Alert Originators across the country. FEMA does not validate the content of each message. As such, it may contain a small percentage of human error. OpenFEMA does not have a full backup capability so if the site goes down, the information will be inaccessible. This is a rare occurrence. Earlier messages may contain non-compliant geocoordinates. Recent versions of the software check these coordinates for compliance. This dataset is not intended to be an official federal report and should not be considered an official federal report. If you are using this site for other than research purposes, please understand that these CAP messages are captured only after the official IPAWS message has been sent. Note that the original IPAWS CAP message is provided in the originalMessage element of the returned JSON object. The XML based message is encoded such that a separate tool, such as a JSON parser, computer language, or browser must be used to view the original format. See the originalMessage field description for additional details. Due to its size and its hierarchical data structure, working with the IPAWS Archived Alerts file can be challenging. See the OpenFEMA Guide to Working with Large Data Sets page for useful hints and tips: https://www.fema.gov/about/openfema/working-with-large-data-sets . The Developer Resources page has sample IPAWS API queries in the section called IPAWS Archived Alerts Query Examples: https://www.fema.gov/about/openfema/developer-resources

Tags: threats-and-hazards
Organization: Department of Homeland Security