State guide

NSW emergency data: sources and coverage

New South Wales publishes emergency data through the Rural Fire Service and the State Emergency Service. Four feeds, three formats, and no single one of them covers the whole state.

Overview

NSW RFS carries bushfires and major incidents, twice over: once as GeoJSON for speed and once as CAP-AU for detail. RFS-WARN carries the official warnings, and SES carries floods, storms and rescues. Each publishes separately, in a different format, on a different cadence.

Available feeds

Feed	Format	Update	Coverage
NSW RFS Current Incidents	GeoJSON	30 sec	Bushfires, major incidents
NSW RFS Major Incidents (CAP-AU)	CAP-AU XML	5 min	The same incidents enriched with polygons, severity, fuel type and fire size
NSW RFS Warning Alerts	CAP-AU XML	5 min	Official warnings with polygons
NSW SES HazardWatch	ArcGIS REST	5 min	Floods, storms, rescues

Integration notes

Agencies: RFS (bushfires), RFS-WARN (warnings), SES (floods, storms).
Timestamps: RFS publishes a 12-hour AM/PM format (for example "7/04/2026 6:38:00 AM") in local time, so it needs custom parsing to reach ISO 8601.
Geometry: RFS incidents include polygon boundaries for larger fires, not only point coordinates. The GeoJSON is well formed but uses NSW-specific alert terminology.
Auth: All three feeds are public. No authentication required.
Limitations: RFS covers Rural Fire Service incidents only. Floods and storms live in the separate SES HazardWatch feed, so no single NSW feed covers every emergency.