Aotearoa · Public alerting · Live

The go-to source for New Zealand
emergency information and response.

A live, audience-neutral hazard view for the public and the responders who serve them.

Independent and donor-funded. Designed under Te Tiriti partnership with Te Mana Raraunga at the foundation. Hosted in Aotearoa.

Open the live map Brief us How it works ↓

Built on official New Zealand sources

GeoNet
Quakes · Volcanoes · Tsunami
NEMA
CAP warnings · Civil Defence
WakaKotahi
Road events · TrafficNZ
MetService
Weather · Severe forecasts

Provenance preserved on every item. No editorialising.

Posture

NZ-sovereign hosting
Catalyst Cloud · AWS Auckland (ap-southeast-2)
NZISM-aligned
Controls map maintained · audit by Phase 2
Privacy Act 2020
PIA on every user-data surface
Te Tiriti partnership
Te Mana Raraunga at the foundation

Full procurement posture →

Live data flow

One pipeline. Continuously.

Live · simulated cadenceaudience-neutral · severity-true · accountable

Official sources

GeoNet · NEMA · Waka Kotahi · MetService

Severity tiers

info · watch · advisory · warning · emergency

Tile latency

<100ms

WebGL2 · sub-second hot path

Personal data sold

Server-side fanout · NZ-sovereign

Aotearoa, live

What an emergency operator sees.

Live·14:32 NZST

Aotearoa · all regions·3 active·Warning

Quake epicentre
Warning tier
Road incident
Aftershock cluster
Alpine Fault · Hikurangi margin

Who it's for

Two first-class audiences. One data spine.

For the public

Whānau deciding whether to evacuate, shelter, or travel.

A calm, accessible map of what's happening right now across Aotearoa. Saved zones notify you even when the browser is closed.

Live hazards from official feeds
Saved zones with privacy-respecting alerts
Free to use — no account required to read

Open the live map →

For Civil Defence & emergency services

Operators deciding where resources go.

The same data spine, responder-grade: density over decoration, human accountability on the issuance path.

Compose · review · audit alerts
Severity-true; aligned with NEMA CAP
Audit trail on every issued message

Operator console →Procuring this for an agency? →

How it works

From official feed to accountable alert.

One pipeline, five visible stages. The same data spine serves both the public map and the operator console.

01Ingest
Feeds in, audience-neutral.
Four official feeds normalised against a single severity model. Provenance preserved on every item.
4 feeds · 1 severity model
Live event stream
- GeoNetM4.2 · 14km E of Kaikōura
  14:02
- NEMASevere weather warning · Tasman
  13:48
- Waka KotahiSH1 closed — slip near Kaikōura
  13:31
- MetServiceHeavy rain watch · West Coast
  13:10
02Subscribe
Draw a zone, get the events that matter.
Saved zones fan out server-side. Alerts reach you even when the browser is closed.
Server-side fanout · zero personal data sold
Zone
Whānau · Wellington
3 active matches
03Alert
Severity-true, end to end.
One ladder — info · watch · advisory · warning · emergency — enforced across the Rust engine and the TS API.
5-tier severity · 0 silent drift
Severity ladder · shared
- infotier 0
- watchtier 1
- advisorytier 2
- warningtier 3
- emergencytier 4
Rust geofence engine · TS API · enforced at compile time
04Issue
Human accountability at issuance.
Critical alerts require a named operator. Every message composed, reviewed, audited.
Compose · review · audit
Issuance audit · A-2841
- 14:03:11op_saracomposeA-2841
- 14:03:42op_kahureviewA-2841
- 14:04:02op_kahuissue · warningA-2841
- 14:04:02systemfanout · 11,204 zonesA-2841
Every critical alert is named, reviewed, and traceable. By design.

See it move

Two minutes, end to end.

Demo video

Recorded walkthrough lands here once the Phase 0 slice is captured end-to-end.

What we will not do

Hard constraints, not aspirations.

No facial recognition on any feed
Human accountability on critical alerts
No personal data sold; aggregated insurance products only with consent
No dark patterns in commerce or subscription flow
No models in production without a published model card

Read the full principles document →

For government & agencies

Designed for agency procurement, not retrofitted for it.

Civil Defence Emergency Management groups, lifeline utilities, and central-government agencies evaluating BeaconNZ — here is the posture, written down. Updated as the work lands; never softened to make a sale.

Hosting & sovereignty: Operational data lives in NZ — Catalyst Cloud (Wellington) and AWS Auckland (ap-southeast-2). It never leaves the country. Cloudflare CDN serves public assets only; no personal data crosses the CDN boundary.
Standards & privacy: Aligned with NZISM controls and the Privacy Act 2020 (Information Privacy Principles). A Privacy Impact Assessment accompanies every user-data surface. SOC 2 Type 1 attestation targeted by Phase 2; we will not claim it before it is held.
Open & auditable: Source code is open and inspectable — severity model, ingest pipeline, and alert engine. Issuance audit trails are append-only. Model cards published before any ML deployment, per repo red-lines.
Iwi partnership: Te Mana Raraunga principles apply when work touches user-contributed data, community reports, or mātauranga Māori. Partnership is structural — not a consultation step layered on after design decisions.
Engagement model: Discovery brief → paid pilot → operational subscription. Comfortable on All-of-Government procurement frameworks where applicable; flexible on RFI/RFP responses and bespoke contract terms.
Continuity & exit: Open data formats throughout (GeoJSON, CAP, Postgres dumps). No proprietary lock-in: an agency taking BeaconNZ in-house at the end of a contract takes their data, the schema, and the open-source surface with them.

Looking for the security disclosure path? See /security.

Capabilities

The full surface

Live hazard map

GeoNet, NEMA, Waka Kotahi, MetService — one canvas, provenance preserved.

Two first-class audiences

Operator console for Civil Defence; calm public view for whānau.

Saved zones & alerts

Server-side fanout. Matches arrive even when the browser is closed.

NZ-sovereign hosting

Catalyst Cloud + AWS Auckland. No facial recognition. No data sold.

Iwi-partnered

Te Mana Raraunga at the foundation — structural, not decorative.

Open and inspectable

Severity model, ingest pipeline, and alert engine all open for review.

Roadmap

Where we're going

Sourced from docs/plan-v0.2.md. Updated as the work lands.

Phase 0 — End-to-end spike
In progress
Live slice from feeds to map: GeoNet + NEMA CAP + Waka Kotahi → Postgres + NATS → GeoJSON API → web map. Alerts service runs the geofence + issuance path on the same stream.
Phase 1 — Public alpha
Next
Public mobile app, MetService raster tiles (rain, wind), PMTiles for offline-friendly basemaps, multi-language alert bodies, Stripe-backed supporter tier.
Phase 2 — Responder console
Planned
Operator views for Civil Defence and emergency services: composing, reviewing, and auditing alerts with human accountability at point of issuance.
Phase 3 — Trusted intelligence
Planned
Published model cards and evaluation for ML-assisted triage. Aggregated, consented insurance data products. Iwi-partnered community reporting surfaces.

Support

Help keep emergency information public.

BeaconNZ is independent and donor-funded during Phase 0. Donations cover NZ-sovereign hosting, ingest from official feeds, and the engineering time to keep alerts fast and trustworthy. No individual user location is shared with third parties. No data is sold.

• One-off and recurring giving
• Receipts emailed for tax purposes (where applicable)
• Transparent quarterly cost reports

Donate

We're wiring up the donation flow now. In the meantime, the best way to support BeaconNZ is to follow along and contribute on GitHub.

Donation flow coming soon

Contribute

The go-to source for New Zealand
emergency information and response.

One pipeline. Continuously.

What an emergency operator sees.

Two first-class audiences. One data spine.

Whānau deciding whether to evacuate, shelter, or travel.

Operators deciding where resources go.

From official feed to accountable alert.

Feeds in, audience-neutral.

Draw a zone, get the events that matter.

Severity-true, end to end.

Human accountability at issuance.

Two minutes, end to end.

Hard constraints, not aspirations.

Designed for agency procurement, not retrofitted for it.

The full surface

Live hazard map

Two first-class audiences

Saved zones & alerts

NZ-sovereign hosting

Iwi-partnered

Open and inspectable

Where we're going

Phase 0 — End-to-end spike

Phase 1 — Public alpha

Phase 2 — Responder console

Phase 3 — Trusted intelligence

Help keep emergency information public.

Donate

Build with us

Code

Partner

Report a bug

The go-to source for New Zealand emergency information and response.

One pipeline. Continuously.

What an emergency operator sees.

Two first-class audiences. One data spine.

Whānau deciding whether to evacuate, shelter, or travel.

Operators deciding where resources go.

From official feed to accountable alert.

Feeds in, audience-neutral.

Draw a zone, get the events that matter.

Severity-true, end to end.

Human accountability at issuance.

Two minutes, end to end.

Hard constraints, not aspirations.

Designed for agency procurement, not retrofitted for it.

The full surface

Live hazard map

Two first-class audiences

Saved zones & alerts

NZ-sovereign hosting

Iwi-partnered

Open and inspectable

Where we're going

Phase 0 — End-to-end spike

Phase 1 — Public alpha

Phase 2 — Responder console

Phase 3 — Trusted intelligence

Help keep emergency information public.

Donate

Build with us

Code

Partner

Report a bug

The go-to source for New Zealand
emergency information and response.