Proximity Alerts: Automatically Protecting Assets from Natural Hazards

The Manual Monitoring Problem

Organizations with distributed assets across hazard-prone regions face an impossible monitoring burden. Earthquake data is published by the USGS, EMSC, and GeoNet. Wildfire perimeters come from NASA FIRMS. Tsunami warnings are issued by NOAA and the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center. Volcanic activity is tracked by the Smithsonian GVP. Tropical cyclone forecasts are published by multiple national meteorological agencies.

For a company with 40 sites across three continents, maintaining awareness of every relevant natural hazard means monitoring dozens of data sources, cross-referencing event coordinates against asset locations, and making judgment calls about proximity and severity — around the clock, 365 days a year.

No operations team can do this manually. The data volume is too large, the update frequency is too high, and the consequences of missing a relevant event are too severe. This is a problem that requires automation.

How Proximity Alerts Work

Powoflow's proximity alert system continuously evaluates the distance between every new geo-intelligence event and every registered asset. The pipeline has four stages:

1. Geo-Alert Subscriptions

Each site or asset can be configured with one or more geo-alert subscriptions. A subscription defines the data source categories to monitor (seismic, fire, weather, volcanic, maritime, nuclear, etc.), the proximity radius, and the minimum severity threshold. For example: “Alert me when any earthquake of magnitude 4.0 or higher occurs within 200 km of Site Alpha.”

2. Configurable Radius

Proximity radii are configurable per subscription and per hazard type. A wildfire subscription might use a 50 km radius because fire can advance quickly under wind conditions. An earthquake subscription might use 200 km because seismic effects propagate across wider areas. A tsunami subscription on a coastal site might use 500 km to provide adequate lead time.

3. Asset-Boundary Evaluation

When a new event is ingested — whether it is a USGS earthquake, a NASA FIRMS fire hotspot, or a NOAA tsunami bulletin — the system calculates the great-circle distance between the event coordinates and every asset with an active subscription for that data category. If the distance falls within the configured radius and the event meets the severity threshold, an alert is triggered.

4. Deduplication and Cooldown

Rapidly updating events (such as earthquake aftershock sequences or expanding wildfire perimeters) can generate hundreds of raw events. The alert system applies deduplication logic to avoid alert fatigue — grouping related events and applying configurable cooldown periods so that operators receive actionable notifications, not noise.

Use Cases: Where Proximity Alerts Save Lives and Assets

The value of proximity alerts is most visible in four operational scenarios.

Earthquakes Near Mine Sites

Mining operations in seismically active regions — the Pacific Ring of Fire, the Andes, the Himalayan belt — need to know immediately when significant seismic activity occurs nearby. A magnitude 5.5 earthquake 120 km away may require structural inspections of tailings dams, underground workings, and processing facilities. Proximity alerts trigger inspection work orders automatically, with the earthquake details attached.

Wildfires Near Solar Farms

Solar installations in fire-prone regions (California, Australia, southern Europe, South Africa) are vulnerable to radiant heat damage, smoke-related generation losses, and access road closures. NASA FIRMS satellite data detects fire hotspots within hours. A proximity alert at 50 km gives operations teams time to activate evacuation plans, coordinate with fire agencies, and adjust grid commitments.

Tsunamis Near Port Infrastructure

Coastal facilities — ports, LNG terminals, desalination plants, offshore platform support bases — face tsunami risk from submarine earthquakes. NOAA and PTWC bulletins include estimated arrival times and wave heights. Proximity alerts at 500 km provide the 15 to 60 minutes of lead time needed to secure loose equipment, move vessels, and evacuate low-lying areas.

Conflict Zones Near Supply Chains

Organizations with supply chain nodes, warehouses, or personnel in geopolitically unstable regions need real-time awareness of deteriorating conditions. GDACS alerts, INFORM severity indices, and FCDO travel advisories provide structured risk data. Proximity alerts flag when a registered location falls within a newly declared conflict or crisis zone, enabling proactive decisions about personnel safety and logistics rerouting.

The Auto-Notification Pipeline

When a proximity alert triggers, the notification pipeline ensures the right people know immediately — regardless of time zone or device.

The pipeline works as follows:

• Event bus — The proximity evaluation publishes a structured alert event onto the platform event bus, containing the event type, severity, coordinates, affected asset, distance, and subscription configuration.
• Push notifications — Mobile push notifications are delivered to the site manager, operations lead, and any configured escalation contacts. The notification includes the event summary and a deep link to the event on the Powoflow map.
• Slack and Teams — Webhook integrations post alert details to designated channels, making the information immediately visible to the broader operations team.
• Automatic work order — For configurable alert severities, the system can automatically generate a work order for the affected site. The work order includes the event details, recommended inspection scope, and relevant checklist templates. The maintenance team receives it in their queue alongside routine work.

The entire chain — from event ingestion to push notification — completes in under two minutes for most data sources. For rapidly published feeds like USGS earthquakes, the alert typically arrives within five minutes of the seismic event itself.

Why This Cannot Be Done Manually at Scale

The math is straightforward. Powoflow ingests events from 53 data sources. Some sources publish hundreds of events per day — USGS alone detects over 55 earthquakes daily worldwide. NASA FIRMS publishes thousands of fire hotspots per satellite pass.

For an organization with 40 sites, each new event needs to be evaluated against 40 locations across potentially multiple hazard categories. That is thousands of distance calculations per day, every day, including weekends, holidays, and the middle of the night.

A human operator checking a dashboard periodically will miss events. They will be in a meeting, asleep, or focused on other tasks when a critical event occurs. The proximity alert system never sleeps, never takes a break, and evaluates every single event against every single asset within seconds of ingestion.

For organizations where asset protection and personnel safety are non-negotiable requirements — mining, energy, maritime, defense, humanitarian logistics — automated proximity alerts are not a nice-to-have feature. They are operational infrastructure.