Systems and methods present practical applications to directing emergency alerts from cellular-based message distribution systems to distributed desktop applications via a desktop application gateway. Logic in the desktop applications and their corresponding IP network gateways for the desktop application may direct alerts from the cellular-based system to distributed desktop applications having a connection to the gateway. A distributed application may determine a location of the user and include enhancements to display the alert at a user's computing device. The gateway for the distributed application may store the location information for each logged-in user or registered instance of the user. An interface between the cell broadcast center and the distributed application gateway may allow the gateway to receive the alert, including a region for distributing the alert, from the cell broadcast center, and send the alert to all registered users with a location matching the alert region.