The National Incident Management System (NIMS) defines preparedness as "a continuous cycle of planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating, and taking corrective action in an effort to ensure effective coordination during incident response."  This 'preparedness cycle' is one element of a broader National Preparedness System to prevent, respond to, recover from, and mitigate against natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters.

The Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency supports preparedness by developing policies, ensuring adequate plans are in place and are validated, defining necessary capabilities required to address threats, providing resources and technical assistance to jurisdictions, and integrating and synchronizing preparedness efforts throughout the Nation.

The navigation links to the left take you to pages that highlight each component of the preparedness cycle--and other useful links--that  collectively build a nation prepared.