Emergency alert and response is carried out in different ways around the world. Governments, corporate bodies and individuals take emergencies very seriously and continue to develop ingenious ways of responding to emergencies very swiftly. Most Urban areas have well-developed emergency response systems but this is not true of rural and sub-urban settlements. Security risk keeps increasing by the day due to rapid population growth. This is particularly true at the grassroots or community level. This paper proposes a very effective and economical way of alerting a community to all kinds of security emergencies. It incorporates the use of a mobile application that was codenamed “CEMAS” (Community Emergency Alarm System). The mobile application with a “Panic button” on it provides all inhabitants of the community with the means of triggering two SMS-activated central alarms. The first alarm is located at the community center and the second at the community police station. The central alarm system is activated by pressing the “Panic Button” whenever there is a security threat. The designed and implemented system worked satisfactorily well.

Keywords : Alarm, anti-intruder, motion sensing, images, cloud, server, application programme interface, security, home.