Iranians Don’t Have a Missile Alert System, So Volunteers Built Their Own Warning Map

WIRED covered Mahsa Alert in a report titled “Iranians Don’t Have a Missile Alert System, So Volunteers Built Their Own Warning Map”.

The piece turns on a simple gap: Iran has no public emergency alert system. During the 2026 conflict, alongside the longest internet shutdown in the country's history, that gap meant millions of people had no official way to learn what had been hit or where. WIRED describes how a group of Iranian digital rights activists and volunteers answered that by building a crowdsourced warning map that depends on reports from the public rather than on government announcements.

The report mattered to us because it describes the reason the project exists: when official information is absent, community information is the only source left. International coverage also helped introduce the tool to Iranians abroad, who are often the ones relaying information to family inside the country.

Read the full report at WIRED →

For background on the project see About, for the data see the open data page, and to install the app see Download.