Live site: devops.houstonalert.com
Product: houstonalert.com
Organization: 4th and Bailey
The engineering story behind houstonalert.com — a real-time infrastructure monitoring platform covering 160 Houston metro ZIP codes. This repository contains the source code for the DevOps blog published at devops.houstonalert.com.
| Name | GitHub | Role | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🔵 | Lionel Mosley | @trust-lionel | Backend · Data Pipelines · Architecture |
| 🔷 | Nigel Brooks | @brookstrades-glitch | Frontend · PWA · Mobile · UX |
Built at 4th and Bailey, LLC — Houston, TX.
devops-houston-alert/
├── index.html # DevOps blog — main file
├── sitemap.xml # Submit to Google Search Console & Bing
├── robots.txt # Crawler policy
├── .well-known/
│ └── security.txt # RFC 9116 security disclosure (renew annually)
└── README.md # This file
Houston Alert is a free, real-time infrastructure monitoring platform for the Houston metropolitan area. It aggregates six live data sources into a single unified map covering road closures, flash flood warnings, power outages, weather alerts, seismic activity, and community reports — refreshing every 60 seconds.
During major weather events, Houstonians had no single place to understand what was happening across the city. Government alert channels were siloed — TxDOT, NWS, county flood systems, and 311 were never talking to each other. Houston Alert stitches them together.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| ZIP codes monitored | 160 |
| Data refresh cycle | 60 seconds (30s during severe weather) |
| Live data feeds | 6+ |
| Monthly infrastructure cost | < $20 |
| Cost to users | $0 — free forever |
| Source | Type | Refresh | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Houston TranStar | Road & traffic incidents | 60s | Freeway sensors · cameras · dispatch |
| TxDOT | Construction & lane closures | 60s | ArcGIS REST · I-10 · 290 · Beltway |
| National Weather Service | Weather alerts & warnings | 60s / 30s | Harris · Fort Bend · Galveston · Brazoria · Montgomery · Waller |
| Harris County FWS · USGS NWIS | Stream gauges · flood stages | 60s | Harris County bayous & creeks |
| USGS Earthquake Catalog | Seismic activity | 60s | Houston bounding box · induced seismicity |
| Social Signal Layer | Community reports | 5min | X API v2 · 8 incident categories · confidence scored |
Browser
└── PWA · houstonalert.com
└── Interactive Map · Live Feed Panel · ZIP Filter
↕ CDN Edge → /api/* Proxy
Frontend (Static Delivery · Global CDN)
↕ HTTPS
Backend (Event Aggregation Server · Node / Express)
├── 60s Scheduler
├── In-Memory Event Store (6hr TTL · 2,000 event cap)
└── Dedup Engine (FNV-1a hash · source-agnostic IDs · 300m radius)
↕ External APIs
Pollers
├── Road Conditions (TranStar · ArcGIS)
├── NWS Weather (NOAA REST)
├── Flood Gauges (USGS NWIS)
├── Seismic (FDSN)
├── TxDOT (DriveTexas)
└── Social Signals (X API v2)
- In-memory store over a database — write latency matters more than persistence for a real-time feed. Events older than 6 hours are no longer actionable.
- Scheduled polling over webhooks — not all government APIs support webhooks; polling was the only reliable cross-source architecture.
- Deterministic deduplication — identical events from different sources produce the same FNV-1a hash, preventing duplicate map pins.
- Confidence scoring — official sources are verified; social signals are weighted by post volume, keyword specificity, and geographic precision and surfaced as a 0–100% confidence score.
Houston Alert is deployed as a PWA — not a native app. For an emergency information tool, zero installation friction is a core safety feature. During a hurricane you don't wait for an app to download — you send a link and someone is looking at real-time data within seconds.
| PWA Capability | Status |
|---|---|
| Home screen install (no App Store) | ✅ |
| Push notifications | ✅ |
| Geolocation-aware map | ✅ |
| Static CDN delivery (< 1s load) | ✅ |
| Responsive — 320px to 27" | ✅ |
| Deep-linkable events | ✅ |
| iOS Safari compositor fix | ✅ Applied at 900px breakpoint |
The blog uses the Fluent 2 / Material 3 hybrid token layer from index_v16.html, maintained by 4th and Bailey:
| Token | Value | Usage |
|---|---|---|
--md-primary |
#0f6cbd |
Links · buttons · active states |
--md-secondary |
#115ea3 |
Secondary containers |
--md-error |
#c50f1f |
Alerts · challenge blocks |
--md-warning |
#da3b01 |
Warnings · social signals |
--md-success |
#107c10 |
Resolved · live status |
--md-background |
#f5f5f5 |
Page background |
--md-surface-container-lowest |
#ffffff |
Cards · detail pane |
| Body font | Segoe UI | Matches v16 system font |
This blog is a static site with no build step. The repository contains all files needed to serve the site — index.html, sitemap.xml, robots.txt, manifest.json, browserconfig.xml, and the /icons/ folder.
Deployment and hosting details are managed privately by 4th and Bailey and are not documented in this public repository.
This is a public read-only repository. The main branch is protected. To report an issue or suggest a correction, open a GitHub Issue. Direct contributions via pull request are not accepted at this time.
To report a security vulnerability, see .well-known/security.txt for the responsible disclosure contact and process. Do not open a public GitHub Issue for security matters.
| Item | Status |
|---|---|
JSON-LD — TechArticle |
✅ Rich result eligible |
JSON-LD — BreadcrumbList |
✅ SERP path display |
JSON-LD — Organization |
✅ Brand entity |
| Open Graph — full article suite | ✅ |
| Twitter / X card | ✅ summary_large_image |
| Canonical URL | ✅ https://devops.houstonalert.com/ |
sitemap.xml |
✅ Submit to Search Console & Bing |
robots.txt |
✅ |
security.txt |
✅ .well-known/ · RFC 9116 · renew annually |
Validate structured data: validator.schema.org
Test Open Graph: developers.facebook.com/tools/debug
Houston Alert DevOps uses analytics to understand how readers engage with the content. Analytics implementation details are managed privately by 4th and Bailey.
- Community Reporting — let verified Houston residents submit events with automatic confidence scoring
- ZIP Code Subscriptions — persistent push notifications by neighborhood, commute route, or school zone
- Historical Pattern Analysis — flood-likelihood models for specific bayous based on continuous rainfall data
The og-image.png at the repo root serves three purposes:
1. GitHub repository social preview — displayed at the top of this README and automatically used by GitHub when the repo is shared on social platforms. Update it in Settings → Social preview if you want GitHub to use it as the repo card image too.
2. Blog post hero image — rendered directly on the page between the byline and the KPI strip, giving readers and Google a visible, crawlable image.
3. Open Graph & Twitter card — referenced in <meta property="og:image"> and <meta name="twitter:image"> so shares on LinkedIn, X, Slack, iMessage, and Discord all render the full 1200×630px preview card.
To update the image: replace og-image.png at the repo root and push. Then force-rescrape the URL at developers.facebook.com/tools/debug to clear cached previews.
© 2026 4th and Bailey, LLC. All rights reserved.
Houston Alert is a free public safety resource for the Houston metropolitan area. The platform will remain free to access for every resident, indefinitely — no paywalls, no subscriptions, no advertising.
Data is sourced from public government APIs (TranStar, TxDOT, NWS/NOAA, USGS, HCFWS) and the X API v2. Each source retains its own terms of use.
4th and Bailey exists to build things that matter in the communities we're part of. Houston Alert isn't a side project. It's an obligation.
— Lionel Mosley & Nigel Brooks