San Mateo County is located in the San Francisco Bay Area and covers most of the San Francisco Peninsula just south of San Francisco and north of Santa Clara County. San Francisco International Airport is located at the northern end of the county, and Silicon Valley begins at the southern end.

San Mateo selected the Roam Secure Alert Network™ (RSAN) for emergency-based text communications. The region comprises an area that is covered under San Francisco Urban Area Security Initiative (UASI) grant funding, which enabled San Mateo and surrounding counties to use funding from the Department of Homeland Security to purchase RSAN.

The system will substantially enhance the Bay Area’s regional interoperability and connectivity approach for emergency communications. Additionally, the area’s RSAN system will be linked with the existing Northern California Regional Terrorism Threat Assessment Center (NC RTTAC), which covers more than 100 federal and local law enforcement agencies, providing critical law enforcement information and alerts. Including real-time notifications for the area’s first responders, the systems will be capable of notifying residents in specific communities or within the entire region of incidents, events, and aftercare instructions for situations such as severe weather, tsunami warnings, traffic problems, earthquake notifications, and power and phone outages.