Considering the emergency sector as critical infrastructure and with reference to the concepts of preparedness & prevention as well as criticality, the dissertation examines to what extent software applications can be used to support exercises in civil protection and disaster response. In this context, a network-theoretical approach is pursued and an attempt is made to model and investigate scenario-based exercises as dynamic networks of different types of relationships. The work also addresses the particular dual role of the emergency sector in the system of infrastructures and addresses the importance of the exercise for the sector. The aim of the dissertation is to examine the potential of social network analysis for planning and evaluating exercises and to consider the resulting requirements for software systems and organizations in practice. For this purpose, a network-based support software is designed, implemented and evaluated in different disaster control exercises. The results show that the application and the associated methodology of social network analysis offer great potential especially for the evaluation of exercises. The software enables a systematic recording and evaluation of communication relationships in particular and can therefore make a valuable contribution, for example, to assessing the workload of actors, analyzing compliance with command structures or explaining dynamics in teams.