The Design and Implementation of ZEUS: Novel Support in Managing Large-Scale Evacuations

This paper introduces ZEUS, a novel software tool for the management of large-scale evacuations. The tasks ZEUS supports were derived from two Standard Operating Procedures, developed on demand of the German federal states. To this date, the authors are not aware of another software tool that gives technical support to the management and control of large-scale evacuations as ZEUS does. It comprises functionalities to (pre-)plan a large-scale evacuation, as well as functions for the management of the flow of evacuees during an evacuation situation. This paper describes how the requirements of ZEUS were derived from the two named planning frameworks and how use-cases were developed to meet the requirements; these use-cases were conceptualized as different steps of a workflow. In an evaluation, the paper gives credit how ZEUS can provide technical support for the evaluation of large-scale evacuations. The development phase of ZEUS has been finished and is presented in this paper; the testing phase of the application will consist of a two-staged review process: first, a controlled theoretical scenario is tested and, upon successful completion, a practical test on a large scale will be executed.