Game teaches children to protect against natural hazards

[Eliot Christian <echristi@usgs.gov>]

This looks to me like a really cool initiative that may be of interest to members of this TC. 

Here's the official blurb about it:

The UN ISDR (International Strategy for Disaster Reduction) is producing an online game to engage and teach children, ages 9-16, how to protect cities and villages against natural hazards through disaster risk planning and management. The online game includes five natural hazard scenarios (flooding, tsunami, wildfire, hurricane and earthquake) with different levels of difficulty that require critical decision-making and strategic planning. The player assesses risk, builds and houses the local population, and assigns roles and systems. A natural hazard then strikes, after which the player assesses damage and receives his/her score. The player who has protected the most people and their livelihoods (property and resources) wins the game. A pilot game, developed by Playerthree Limited is currently being tested in English language schools in Australia, Ghana, Jamaica, and India with the assistance of IFRC, ACTION AID, EMA, USAID, and SEEDS. The game will be available online on 11 Dece
mber 2006 and can be accessible by children all over the world with limited computer access and limited bandwidth. By using flash 7 plugin, the game will be approximately one megabyte in size and accessible by over 90 per cent of the world’s Internet users. UN/ISDR partners are translating the online game in Spanish, French, Hindi and Japanese but there is still a need to promote and broaden the game’s online accessibility across the globe. UN/ISDR is seeking organizations within the public and private sector that can: 1) host and disseminate the game to the widest networks possible, 2) translate the game in Arabic, Chinese, 3) further develop the game to create more scenarios and a CD-rom version, and 4) donate computers with Internet access to schools in remote areas.

The pilot of the game is at http://www.stopdisastersgame.org

For more information, you can contact: Brigitte Leoni, leonib@un.org