I've read about many academic institutes doing things like this as "thought experiments". There not actually preparing for a zombie outbreak, its an exercise in preparedness, and disaster management skills. There are a lot of people who believe in being prepared for extreme situations, myself included. I think the professors of the university probably wanted to make the exercise a bit more light-hearted than a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
Besides, anyone who's ever read World War Z, knows an outbreak is only a matter of time.....
