Patent attributes
Aspects discussed herein relate to providing alerts to a community of devices located in or near a geographic are such as a building or property. The alerts override any alert-inhibiting state of the mobile device to deliver audio, visual, and/or haptic alerts in emergency situations. The communication and emergency alert system may be used to communicate with many different communities of people. Moreover, certain individuals may be members of more than one community at the same time, and the communities themselves may change over time based both on the user's preferences and on their physical locations. Multiple different alerts can be sent to different mobile devices for a single event. The alerts can be customized to particular mobile devices depending on the community to which the mobile device belongs for the event.