Serious Game Design for Flooding Triggered by Extreme Weather

Abstract

Managing crises with limited resources through a serious game is deemed as one of the ways of training and can be regarded as an alternative to a table-top exercise. This article presents the so-called “Operasjon Tyrsdal” serious game, inspired by a real case of extreme weather that hit the west coast of Norway. This reference case is used to add realism to the game. The game is designed for a single player, while the mechanics are framed in such a way that the player will have limited resources, and elevated event pressure over time. Beside applying an iterative Scrum method with seven Sprint cycles, we combined the development work with desk research and used the involvement of testers, including crisis responders. The resulting game has expected features and behaviors, is game(ful), but allow the player to learn through an “After Action” report that logs all player's decisions, which is intended to trigger discussions.

How can gamification be incorporated into disaster emergency planning? A systematic review of the literature

“…Tanes and Cho (2013) conducted a user experience survey to statistically prove how "Beat the Quake" gamified application changed the playing community behaviour positively in preparing themselves for upcoming disasters. Besides, ), Mani et al (2016), and Radianti et al (2017 revealed the effectiveness of using gamified applications in motivating players to gain disaster awareness by conducting user experience surveys before and after playing the applications. Findings of these studies disclosed that the more people play these games, the more they get motivated.…”