Evacuation a serious game for preparation

Mass evacuation is a measure to reduce possible loss of life in the case of potential disasters. Planning for mass evacuation is only useful if these plans are tested and evaluated by government and the public in reality or in simulated events. As a result, any prior experience is likely to be outdated by the next incident, because social structures, public perceptions, perception of decision makers, emergency planning and infrastructure all change over time and based on the previous experience. Especially in the Netherlands mass evacuation in the case of large-scale flooding is once-in-a-lifetime experience or less event because of the high protection level for flooding. The use of serious gaming is an alternative to gather required experience of conduction an evacuation in several events. This article describes the development of a serious game for mass evacuation, as well as experiences gathered from exercises using SPOEL. Finally is concluded that it is possible to evaluate emergency planning for evacuation and develop realistic experience through exercises using SPOEL, in an effort to compensate the gap in experience because of a lack of real life mass-evacuation experience.