  Natural crises form a big threat on environment; these crises mean the loss
of enterprises and individuals, and therefore losses in the sum total of
community development. Management to these crises is required through a crisis
management plan to control the crises before, during, and after the event. One
of the most needed things to consider during preparing the crisis management
plan is preparing the evacuation plan in order to transfer people from the
incident place to a safe place; this must be done quickly and carefully.
Because of the geographic nature of the evacuation process, Geographical
Information System (GIS) has been used widely and effectively for over 20 years
in the field of crisis management in general and in evacuation planning in
particular. This paper provides an overview about evacuation process and the
basic concepts of GIS systems. The paper also demonstrates the importance of
evacuation planning and how GIS systems used in other studies to assists in
evacuation process.
