Terms of Service

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

DataQuoll 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 from official and community sources.

The service is provided for informational purposes only.

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

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.

DataQuoll 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.updated field 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.

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.

Accounts are for real people. When you register you agree that:

• You use your real name. The name you register with must be the name you actually go by. Placeholders, pseudonyms, street addresses, single letters, keyboard mashing, and obviously invented names are not accepted.
• You use a real email address that belongs to you. It must be an address you genuinely use and control, such as your normal personal or work address. Disposable, temporary, and throwaway email services are not permitted, and neither are aliases or sub-addresses created for the purpose of obtaining an additional account.
• Your company and use case are accurate. If you are using the service personally, say so. If you are using it for an organisation, name the organisation.
• One account per person. One person may hold one account. Do not create a second account for yourself under a different name, email address, or alias, whether at the same time or after an earlier account was closed. If you have ended up with two by accident, for example by signing up on a work address and then a personal one, just tell us which to keep. That is a tidy-up, not a breach, and nothing happens to you for it.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account and API key.
• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account.

We may ask you to verify your identity, your email address, or your stated affiliation before an account is activated or a limit is raised. We may refuse or close any registration where the details appear to be false, automated, or created to work around these terms.

The reason for this is straightforward. The free tier is given deliberately, so that people can try the service and build personal and non-commercial projects without paying for it. That only stays possible while people take one account and use it honestly. Accounts created to collect extra free quota take that allowance away from the people it is meant for.

The free tier is for evaluation, or personal and non-commercial use. It is not for commercial or business use: using the data in a product or service you sell, or in the work of a business, internal tools included, needs a paid plan. Non-profit, research and community organisations may use the free tier for their non-commercial work.

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
• Not create or use more than one account, and not use another person's account, in order to obtain more than one free allowance
• Not pool, share, or rotate keys across multiple accounts to serve a single application, product, or organisation

Working around a rate limit is treated the same as exceeding it. If you need more than the free tier provides, the paid plans exist for exactly that, and they start at A$9 a month. If you are a community project or a researcher and the paid tiers are genuinely out of reach, email jack@dataquoll.io and ask. That is a far better outcome for both of us than a second account.

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.

Rate limits are enforced to keep the service fair and available for everyone. The free tier allows 2,000 requests a month on general endpoints, and up to 5,000 in total when the rest are calls to /api/v1/incidents/nearby. Paid plans allow more.

Limits may change. The current limits for every plan are on the pricing page.

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.

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 DataQuoll and the original data sources.

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.

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.

Accounts registered with a false name, a false or disposable email address, or false affiliation details may be suspended or removed without notice, along with any other accounts held by the same person. The same applies to accounts created to obtain more than one free allowance. Where an account is closed for these reasons we are not obliged to provide a refund, and we may decline future registrations from the same person.

If you think an account was closed in error, email jack@dataquoll.io and it will be looked at by a person, not a script.

You can delete your account at any time through your account settings or by emailing jack@dataquoll.io.

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.

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.

Paid plans and add-ons are subscriptions billed in advance through Stripe. They renew until you cancel them in billing. Current prices are on dataquoll.io/pricing.

Wallet credit is bought before it is used. You top up in the dashboard, and the credit is added when Stripe confirms the payment. When the wallet pays for a Declarations-tab lookup, it takes A$1 from your balance. A lookup is charged when it returns a status for the place, including that no declaration covers it. A lookup that cannot find the address, cannot place it in a council area, or withholds status because the address point is not on the property costs nothing.

Credit never expires. It is not refundable, except where the law requires. If a top-up is refunded, the refunded amount is removed from your balance, and credit already spent stays spent. Your balance is frozen while a chargeback or payment dispute is open on one of your top-ups, and if the dispute is lost, that credit is removed.

Unused credit is forfeited when the account is closed, whether you close it or we close it under these terms, except where the law requires otherwise.

If you have questions about these terms: