Scoping the field of disaster exercise evaluation - A literature overview and analysis

Despite encouraging signs of a more cohesive scientific corpus on the evaluation of disaster exercises, there is still room for improvement. The scientific discourse would benefit from greater clarity regarding: (1) the purpose and context in which a specific evaluation method is designed to be used; (2) what the method needs to do (or produce) in order for it to fulfil the purpose; and (3) how the method achieves its goal and thereby fulfils its purpose. Moreover, in order to help researchers to build on each other's work and suggest improvements to evaluation methods, it is urgent that the supporting evidence (for example, empirical data or logical reasoning) for claims regarding the usefulness of a specific method is clearly presented. This is likely to lead to a more vigorous scientific discourse, which will result in increasingly relevant and robust arguments related to how to approach the problem of evaluating disaster exercises in practice.