More than 4.5 million people reside and work in the National Capital Region (NCR), which includes major counties and cities in two states (Virginia and Maryland) including Loudoun County, Va; Montgomery County, Md; Prince William County, Va; Alexandria,Va; Arlington,Va and Fairfax County,Va in addition to the District of Columbia. The NCR collaborates on homeland security initiatives to facilitate enhanced communication, resource sharing and overall security for the nations capital and surrounding region.


The Washington, DC region is the first major metropolitan region in the country to adopt and implement a common, interoperable platform for text-based emergency alerting. All local governments in the Washington metro region can use RSAN to alert tens of thousands of first responders, leadership teams and employees via e-mail and wireless devices. Each jurisdiction has their own redundant system that supports real-time, two-way information sharing and coordination of emergency response efforts among police, fire, emergency management, health, local officials, schools and other specialty units including Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) and Medical Reserve Corps. Jurisdictions can communicate both internally and with one another leveraging equipment already in the hands of their employees, including cell phones, satellite phones, pagers, BlackBerrys, PDAs, e-mail and more. Emergency alerts are delivered in seconds to groups of any size, spanning departments, buildings, jurisdictions and the entire National Capital Region.

DC-area leaders chose text alerting as a means to communicate critical information throughout the NCR based upon its proven, wide-spread reliability in severe weather, potential terror and other emergency situations in the region. During hurricane Katrina RSAN was used locally to prepare agencies for the arrival of evacuees from New Orleans, as well as to coordinate resources involved in Katrina relief efforts. Several of Roam Secure’s Urban Search and Rescue customers also used RSAN for their deployments to the region. During severe weather and other disaster events like Katrina, RSAN can be used for evacuation notification, coordination across agencies and third parties and public communication to inform the public where to seek shelter or resources.

Funding for the NCR project's hardware, software, consulting and services to deploy this network of RSAN systems is through the Department of Homeland Security’s UASI grant program.