Silke Buhr, Rome: A new online game teaches children how to build safer villages and cities in natural disaster-prone environments. Brought to you by the Un International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and Playerthree.

DISASTER REDUCTION

“Food Force” was the world’s first humanitarian computer game, but in the last few years organisations including universities and other UN agencies have developed many new learning/playing tools to tackle important global issues.

A new one on the web is “Stop Disasters”, brought to us by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. That’s an organisation that helps people living in areas where natural disasters – like floods, earthquakes, fires or tsunamis, for example – are likely to happen to prepare better for such hazards. This can mean education initiatives, like teaching kids what to do if there’s a flood. Or it can mean better building techniques, so that houses don’t fall down when there’s an earthquake. Or enabling the community to react better when there’s a disaster – like setting up good water supplies with which to fight fires.

GAMEPLAY

Your role in this free, on-line strategy game is to plan and construct a safer environment for your population. You get to choose between five scenarios: a tsunami-prone village in South East Asia, a Caribbean island on a hurricane path, a Central Australian community susceptible to wildfires, an Eastern Mediterranean village in an earthquake zone, or a population living in the flood plains of central Europe.

The game offers many text prompts to give you the basic information on your community: number of people, objectives (eg build houses for x people), as well as budget and time constraints. Using an interactive pictorial map, you then have to assess the risks of the area and decide your tactics. But hurry up – the clock is ticking, and it’s only a matter of time before disaster will strike. Can you make your community safe in time?

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