Z-Cloud Help Center

Heavy Rain Alerts

Real-time Japan heavy-rain and weather-hazard alerts for your whole tenant — with safety check, area filtering, admin dashboard, and SOS contacts.

Japan Heavy Rain Alerts

NEW

Instant alerts for JMA heavy rain, landslide, flooding, storm and evacuation-relevant weather hazards — with one-tap safety check and admin response tracking.

Japan-only feature

Heavy Rain Alerts use weather-hazard data from JMA — Japan Meteorological Agency and cover Japan only. The feature is disabled by default and must be enabled by a tenant administrator.

Z-Cloud Workspace ingests real-time weather-hazard bulletins, normalizes them into alert events, and pushes them to members across Web, Desktop and Mobile. Critical events use the same full-screen attention pattern as Earthquake Alerts, so users do not miss warnings that may require immediate action.

About local evacuation orders

JMA publishes weather warnings and 警戒レベル相当 information, such as Level 4 = 避難指示相当 (evacuation-order equivalent). This is not the official municipal evacuation order itself. Local evacuation orders such as 避難指示 or 高齢者等避難 are issued by local governments through separate channels such as L-Alert or municipal notification systems. The current Z-Cloud integration displays JMA-equivalent warning levels; it does not ingest official local-government evacuation orders yet.

How It Works

Ingest
JMA weather-hazard feeds and area-based warning bulletins
Dispatch
Filter by prefecture, hazard type, warning level, and user location when enabled
Notify
Web overlay + Mobile modal + OS push — simultaneously

Alert Types

Heavy Rain

Rainfall warnings that may affect commuting, facilities, outdoor work, or local safety.

Landslide

Alerts for slope failure risk in mountainous, saturated, or designated danger areas.

Flooding

Flood, urban inundation, rising river, and low-lying area hazard alerts.

Storm and Severe Weather

Severe weather events that may combine heavy rain, wind, and dangerous travel conditions.

Safety Check

When a critical alert is sent, members can respond quickly with the same options used by Earthquake Alerts:

Safe

"I'm OK" — confirms no assistance is needed.

Need Help

Needs help with travel, communication, shelter, or on-site handling.

Injured

Reports an injury or health issue caused by the weather event.

Emergency

Highest severity — triggers an immediate notification to tenant admins.

The "Unable to respond right now" option lets members defer their response without ignoring the alert.

Area and Location Targeting

Select watched prefectures

Monitor one or more Japanese prefectures, or leave the list empty for all Japan.

Set minimum warning level

Events below the configured level remain in history only and do not trigger user alerts. Level 4 means JMA 避難指示相当 (evacuation-order equivalent), not a municipal order.

Alert users inside the hazard area

When enabled, Z-Cloud prioritizes members whose device or registered location is inside the affected area.

Include users with unknown location

Admins can still notify members without known location to avoid missing people during severe weather.

Admin Dashboard and Settings

Tenant admins use Tenant Admin → Weather Alerts to enable the feature, choose prefectures and hazard types, set the minimum warning level, configure SOS contacts, send a 【TEST】 notification, and review event responses on the dashboard.

The dashboard shows recent events, affected areas, response counts, response filtering, map links for shared locations, and direct-message actions for members who need help.

Privacy

  • User coordinates are stored only when the member explicitly shares location.
  • Test events are clearly labeled 【TEST】.
  • Response data stays inside your Z-Cloud tenant.
  • Z-Cloud reads public/official JMA hazard feeds; it does not read local-government evacuation-order feeds yet.

FAQ

Is this the same as the Weather mini-app?

No. The Weather mini-app is for daily forecasts. Heavy Rain Alerts are life-safety notifications with critical push, full-screen overlay, safety check, and admin tracking.

Does it work outside Japan?

No. The current data source is JMA, which covers Japan.

Does Z-Cloud show official local evacuation orders?

Not yet. The current integration shows JMA weather warnings and 警戒レベル相当 levels. To show official local evacuation orders, Z-Cloud would need an additional source from local governments, such as L-Alert or an appropriate municipal data feed.

Do these alerts bypass Quiet Hours?

Yes. Critical safety alerts such as heavy rain, landslide, flooding, and storm warnings are delivered immediately.

On this page