The challenge of measuring emergency preparedness: integrating component metrics to build system-level measures for strategic national stockpile operations.

Objective: Although significant progress has been made in measuring public health emergency preparedness, system-level performance measures are lacking. This report examines a potential approach to such measures for Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) operations.

Methods: We adapted an engineering analytic technique used to assess the reliability of technological systems-failure mode and effects analysis-to assess preparedness.

Evaluating the Reliability of Emergency Response Systems for Large-Scale Incident Operations.

The ability to measure emergency preparedness-to predict the likely performance of emergency response systems in future events-is critical for policy analysis in homeland security. Yet it remains difficult to know how prepared a response system is to deal with large-scale incidents, whether it be a natural disaster, terrorist attack, or industrial or transportation accident. This research draws on the fields of systems analysis and engineering to apply the concept of system reliability to the evaluation of emergency response systems.