How the Readiness Standards Index is made
The Index records what each national authority publishes about household readiness, with a link to the page it publishes it on. Nothing is averaged, converted or adjusted to make countries easier to compare. This page says where every figure comes from, what an empty cell means, and which two fields involve a judgement rather than a reading.
A methodology is the account of how a dataset was built, detailed enough that somebody who distrusts the result can check it without asking permission.
Last checked against its sources on
What is in it, and what is not
19 countries. A country is included when we hold its official household readiness guidance and can link to the authority that publishes it. A country that is absent has not been assessed and found wanting; we simply do not hold verified data for it yet.
Every figure is what that country’s own authority publishes. Nothing is averaged across countries, nothing is converted into a common standard, and nothing is adjusted to make the countries easier to compare. The disagreement between them is the finding.
What counts as a source
A national civil-protection body, a national government department, or the recognised national organisation that country delegates household readiness messaging to. In that order of preference. Where a country has no single national readiness page, the authority behind a specific published item is used instead, and it is still that country’s own authority.
Every row carries a URL, and every URL was opened and checked on 2026-08-28. That date is the one to look at. It is not the date the page was written or last edited.
What each field means
| Field | Meaning |
|---|---|
| country_code | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. |
| authority | The body that publishes household readiness guidance for that country, named as it names itself. |
| authority_url | Its own page. Every row has one. |
| self_sufficiency_days | The number of days that authority tells households to plan for. |
| litres_per_person_per_day | Its published stored-water figure. |
| total_litres_per_person | The two multiplied, rounded to one decimal. Not a figure any authority publishes. |
| iodine_on_official_list | Whether iodine tablets appear in that country’s household guidance. |
| designated_shelter_in_guidance | Whether a specific room or structure forms part of the answer. |
| prescription_medication_days | The days of prescription medication asked for. |
What an empty cell means, and what it does not
An empty cell means the figure is not published, or that we do not hold it. It never means zero, and it never means the country asks for nothing.
- Portugal sets a 72-hour horizon and names water in the kit without ever quantifying it. Its water cells are empty because ANEPC published no number, not because we could not find one.
- An empty prescription-medication cell means we hold no figure for that country. It does not mean that country’s guidance is silent on medication. This is the softest field in the dataset and it should be read as incomplete rather than as evidence.
The two places this involves judgement
Most fields are read straight out of the source. Two are not, and it is better to say so than to let a careful reader discover it.
- Designated shelter is assigned by hand. It is true for Switzerland, Finland and Israel, where the official guidance points to a specific room or structure: a Schutzraum, a väestönsuoja, a mamad. It is a reading of what the guidance is doing, not a field any authority publishes.
- Iodine tablets on the official list means the item appears in that country’s household guidance. It does not mean every household there is issued them or needs them. Six of the ten set a distance from a reactor instead, and that distinction is in the article rather than in the column.
Reproducing it
Open the authority URL in any row and the figure should be on that page or one click from it. If it is not, that is a defect and we want to hear about it. The dataset is generated from the same tables the guides on this site read, so a correction reaches the article, the tables and the downloads at once.
Citing it
RainWillCome Readiness Standards Index, version 1.0, RainWillCome, 2026-08-28. Available at https://rainwillcome.com/en/what-governments-recommend
Licensed CC BY 4.0. Reuse, republish and build on it, including commercially. The one condition is attribution: name RainWillCome and link to the page, so your own reader can check the figures at the authorities themselves.
Version history
| Version | Date | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1.0 | 2026-08-28 | First publication. |
The version changes when a figure changes, not when the wording around it does. Corrections are listed here rather than made silently.