By defining the chain of medical care and the capacities of the successive phases within this chain, an attempt is made to analyze and grade the determinants of these capacities. In this way, calculations that indicate overall disaster preparedness can be expressed in a figure ranging from 1–5. The capacity of the system is taken as the lowest score obtained for the components of the system. The methodology used for this assessment of pre-paredness is described and an example is used to show the efficacy of this methodology.
