Terms of Service

Advisory only — not an official flood warning service

Flood Sentinel is a machine-learning forecasting and monitoring platform. The forecasts, threshold breach notifications, and alerts generated by our service are advisory and must not be used as the sole basis for life-safety decisions such as evacuation orders, road closures, or emergency response activation.

Official flood warnings in Australia are issued by the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and emergency response is coordinated by State Emergency Services (SES). Always consult those sources for operational emergency decisions and follow the directions of local authorities.

By using the service you acknowledge that Flood Sentinel makes no warranty as to the accuracy, timeliness, or completeness of any forecast, reading, or alert, and is not liable for decisions made in reliance on the service.

1. Definitions

• “We”, “us”, “Flood Sentinel” — Adam Murphy trading as Flood Sentinel, NSW, Australia.
• “Service” — the websites at floodsentinel.com.au, app.floodsentinel.com.au, maps.floodsentinel.com.au, the public REST API, the Sentinel forecasting and alerting platform, and any associated mobile apps.
• “You”, “Customer” — the natural person or organisation using the Service.
• “Plan” — your active subscription tier (Free, Watch, Pulse, Atlas, or Custom). The features and limits of each Plan are listed on our pricing page.

2. Subscriptions and billing

2.1 Trial. Every paid Plan includes a 14-day free trial. A valid payment method is required to start the trial. Cancel before the trial ends and you will not be charged.

2.2 Recurring billing. Subscriptions auto-renew monthly (or annually if selected) until cancelled. Charges are processed by Stripe in Australian dollars (GST inclusive where applicable).

2.3 Plan changes. You may upgrade or downgrade at any time via the customer portal. Upgrades are prorated immediately. Downgrades take effect at the end of the current billing period.

2.4 Cancellation. You may cancel at any time. Cancellation stops future renewals; you retain access until the end of the current period. We do not refund the unused portion of a paid period unless required by Australian Consumer Law.

2.5 Failed payments. If a renewal payment fails, we will retry over 7 days and email reminders. If still unpaid, the Plan reverts to Free and your data is retained per our retention policy.

2.6 Manual invoicing. Government and council customers that cannot pay by card may request bank-transfer invoicing by emailing accounts@floodsentinel.com.au.

3. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Share account credentials with unauthorised users.
• Resell or sub-license access beyond the seat limit of your Plan.
• Probe, scan, scrape, or flood the Service beyond the published rate limits, or attempt to circumvent rate-limiting or authentication.
• Reverse-engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code from the Service.
• Use the Service for any purpose unlawful in Australia or in the jurisdiction you operate from, or in any way that interferes with BoM's flood-warning services.
• Attempt to access another customer's data or any backend system not intended for customer access.
• Misrepresent Flood Sentinel forecasts as official BoM warnings.

We may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these rules, with or without notice depending on the severity.

4. Your data & intellectual property

4.1 Your data. You own the configurations, alert subscriptions, custom catchments, and any annotations you create on the Service. We hold a limited licence to host, process, and display that data solely for the purpose of providing the Service.

4.2 Our platform. Flood Sentinel owns the platform software, machine-learning models, forecasts derived from those models, and all branding. We grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the Service per your Plan.

4.3 Hydrological data. Rain and river observations served by the Service come from BoM's Flood Warning Network under the Water Regulations 2008, mostly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution Australia 4.0. See our data attribution page. When you re-publish or display this data outside our Service, you must attribute BoM as required by the licence.

4.4 Feedback. If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use them without obligation or compensation to you.

5. Service availability

The Free, Watch, and Pulse Plans are provided on a best-effort basis with no guaranteed uptime. The Atlas Plan includes a 99.5% monthly uptime SLA. The Custom Plan includes a 99.95% monthly uptime SLA. See the SLA page for definitions, exclusions, and service-credit calculations.

We may schedule maintenance windows that interrupt service. Where practical we'll announce these in advance via email and our status page.

6. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by Australian Consumer Law, our total aggregate liability under these Terms is capped at the amount you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim, or AUD $100, whichever is greater. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages, including lost profits, lost revenue, or business interruption.

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits any guarantees, rights, or remedies you may have under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot be lawfully excluded.

7. Termination

You may terminate by cancelling your subscription. We may terminate or suspend the Service if you breach these Terms, fail to pay, or use the Service in a way that risks harm to us, BoM, or other customers. On termination, you lose access to the Service; data is retained per the Privacy Notice.

8. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. Material changes will be notified by email to the address on your account at least 30 days before they take effect. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance of the updated Terms.

9. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. The courts of NSW have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except where a consumer-protection law gives you a non-excludable right to proceed in another forum.

10. Contact

Account/billing: accounts@floodsentinel.com.au
Privacy: privacy@floodsentinel.com.au
Support: support@floodsentinel.com.au
Sales: sales@floodsentinel.com.au