Medical services calculator
How many medics does your event need? The licensing authority will ask, and "we have two people with a first aid certificate" is rarely the answer that satisfies them. The Maurer scheme is the most widely used German method for turning visitor numbers, event type and special circumstances into a risk score, and that score into helpers, vehicles and emergency physicians.
This calculator implements both established methods: the Maurer scheme with all 30 event types, and the Cologne algorithm, which does not award points but estimates how many people will actually need help. The two disagree by design — running both shows you why.
For LARP and outdoor events, which neither method covers, there is a prompt block further down: the factors that should push you towards a higher classification.
The permissible head count this works from comes out of the Capacity and escape route calculator; what heat or a thunderstorm adds is in the Weather and abort criteria card.
Total risk score
0.8 points
Visitor points 2 × weighting 0.4 + special points 0
- First aiders: kein Sanitätswachdienst (ggf. 2 Helfer)
- Patient transport ambulances: 0
- Emergency ambulances: 0
- Emergency physicians: 0
- High-capacity ambulance: 0
- Command structure: keine stabsmäßige Einsatzleitung
- Treatment station: keine UHS
Estimated cases
10 first-aid cases
- 1.0 first-aid cases per hour
- 2.0 ambulance cases
- 0.20 emergency physician cases
- 1 additional ambulances needed (0.20)
- 1 additional physician response vehicles needed (0.02)
Without a first-aid service roughly 5 extra runs would fall to the regular ambulance service — more than it can absorb. The measure is therefore not merely sensible but unavoidable.
Patrol district
- Maximum district size: 250 m
- Cases per hour in this district: 0.5
- Recommended provision: 1 first-aid team
Treatment station notation: (intensive places/treatment places/recovery places). Per the source, a UHS (1/1/8) requires one emergency physician, one paramedic, two emergency medical technicians, five first aiders and the equipment of an ambulance.
For LARP and outdoor events: reasons to go a step higher
The scheme knows no woodland event with night play. It does not compute these factors — they are reasons to pick a higher event type and to say why when you file.
- Ambulance response time well over ten minutes
- Night operation, play or build-up in the dark
- Woodland, rough terrain, incident sites that are hard to find
- Staged combat, padded weapons included
- Open fire, torches, fire show
- Water on or beside the site
- Participants under 18
- Multi-day event with overnight stay
Both methods give experience-based guidance, not a legal standard. What binds you is what the authority, the ambulance service and the contracted aid organisation agree between them.
Maurer-Schema (Algorithmus nach Maurer), Wikipedia-Fassung, abgerufen am 2026-09-18
How this is calculated
The scheme works like this: the point values for the maximum permitted and the expected visitor numbers are added, the sum is multiplied by the event type's weighting factor, and the points for special circumstances are added to that product.
If the event takes place in a structurally enclosed venue the point value is doubled — that sentence sits under the heading "Anzahl der Besucher" in the scheme, so this calculator doubles the visitor points before the weighting rather than doubling the result. Every five VIPs add ten points, up to thirty; intelligence of heightened violence adds ten once.
From the total score it reads off helpers, patient transport and emergency ambulances, emergency physicians, the command structure and the treatment station. Each rung's boundary belongs to the lower rung: 13.0 points is still "4,1 – 13,0".
Where no permitted visitor number is known, the scheme allows an estimate of four people per square metre. That is a different question from how many people may lawfully be present — the capacity calculator answers that one.
The Cologne algorithm works the other way round: across large events, experience puts first-aid cases at two per 1,000 visitors per ten hours. A fifth of those need an ambulance, and a tenth of those an emergency physician. Those base rates are multiplied by five risk factors — weather, audience, mass phenomena, suitability of the venue, and your own experience. Multiplied, not added: in the source's own example, warm weather plus an awkward site turned 80 cases into 180.
The estimated cases then drive the plan: how many extra ambulances are needed once the regular service absorbs its share? How large may a patrol district be for a team to arrive within the response target — a dense crowd takes four times as long to cross as a seated hall? And at what case rate per hour does one team stop being enough?
- Maurer scheme — experience values, not a legal standard
- Cologne algorithm: Knopp/Schmidt, „Der Kölner Algorithmus im Vergleich zum Maurer-Schema“, vfdb, February 2010
- What binds you is what the authority, the ambulance service and the aid organisation agree
Every figure with its source and review date is in the metrics register — including when it was last checked against the regulation.
Common questions
No. The Maurer scheme is a body of experience values, not a regulation. What binds you is what the authority, the ambulance service and the contracted aid organisation agree between them. The value of this calculator is that you enter that conversation with a figure someone can follow rather than a hunch.
The scheme comes from a world of concert halls and town festivals; there is no LARP factor. Pick whatever is closest and read the prompt block: a long ambulance response time, night operation, woodland, staged combat and open fire are all reasons to go a step higher — and to say why when you file.
Ask your authority and your aid organisation which one they work with. Maurer is simpler and reproducibly gives the same figure; the Cologne algorithm responds to duration, terrain and your own experience, and produces the plan alongside it — patrol districts, vehicles, treatment station. Run both. If they diverge widely, that is the interesting part of the conversation.
Because the causes compound rather than add: heat in a dense crowd on a site the ambulance service can only reach from one side is worse than the sum of those problems. It also means the factor grows quickly — two moderate factors of 1.5 each already more than double the demand.
No, it is the core of one. A plan also covers where the treatment station stands, access routes, the link to the regular ambulance service, communications and alerting. The safety concept assistant covers the adjacent ground.
Organiser briefing
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Related tools
- Capacity and escape route calculatorMaximum visitor numbers from floor area, escape routes and permit — the smallest of the three applies.
- Weather and abort criteria cardA printable card of thresholds and measures — wind from your structure's rated wind, not from guesswork.
- Toilet and camp supply calculatorToilets, washbasins, showers, water and waste — and which of it the regulation actually prescribes.
- Awareness concept builderBuilding blocks for an awareness concept — an information sheet for participants and a briefing for the crew.
Orientation value. This calculator is no substitute for talking to the licensing authority, the building inspectorate, the fire service or a qualified planner. The German states each adapt the model regulation, so what binds your event is your state's version plus the conditions in your own permit.
Figures as of: 1.0 · last reviewed: 2026-09-18