Alerts

An alert is a notice that signals that a condition requiring attention has occurred or is imminent. Alerts can be generated by software, hardware, or humans and can target operators, end users, or the general public. In computing, alerts are commonly produced by monitoring and incident management systems in response to performance thresholds or failures.

Alert types include technical system alerts (service outages, high error rates, resource exhaustion), user-facing alerts (in-application banners, emails), and public safety or emergency alerts (weather warnings, civil alerts). Delivery channels include push notifications, email, SMS, phone calls, and sirens, often combined for redundancy.

Key design considerations: timely and actionable messages, clear priority levels, reliable routing and escalation, auditing, and privacy. To avoid alert fatigue, systems implement deduplication, suppression during quiet hours, acknowledgment workflows, and escalation to on-call staff. Accessibility and localization are important.

Standards and history: In emergency management, the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) enables interoperable alerts across agencies and channels. In IT, alerts are generated by monitoring tools (for example, metric-based triggers) and delivered through incident response platforms; effective alerting supports rapid triage, root cause analysis, and accountability.