Abstract
The need for improvement of societal disaster resilience and response efforts was evident after the destruction caused by the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season. We present a novel conceptual framework for improving disaster resilience through the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience. Our framework is implemented via Project Lily Pad, a serious geogame based on our conceptual framework, serious game case studies, interviews and real-life experiences from 2017 Hurricane Harvey survivors in Dickinson, TX, and an immersive hurricane-induced flooding scenario. The game teaches a four-fold set of skills relevant to spatial thinking and disaster resilience, including reading a map, navigating an environment, coding verbal instructions, and determining best practices in a disaster situation. Results of evaluation of the four skills via Project Lily Pad through a “think aloud” study conducted by both emergency management novices and professionals revealed that the game encouraged players to think spatially, can help build awareness for disaster response scenarios, and has potential for real-life use by emergency management professionals. It can be concluded from our results that the combination of serious games, geographic information systems (GIS), spatial thinking, and disaster resilience, as implemented via Project Lily Pad and our evaluation results, demonstrated the wide range of possibilities for using serious geogames to improve disaster resilience spatial thinking and potentially save lives when disasters occur.
Highlights
Recent hurricanes impacting the Caribbean and the United States’ Atlantic coastlines—such as Maria, Irma, Sandy, and Harvey—have proven the need for at-risk community disaster resilience.The challenge of disaster resilience will only be greater in the coming years—scholars of disaster policy and climatologists predict increases in storm frequency and subsequent costs in the near future [1]
We addressed the three research questions through an implementation and evaluation of our conceptual framework in the form of an original serious geogame, called Project Lily Pad, which is based on empirical evidence gathered from 2017 Hurricane Harvey survivors and the emergency response focused on rescuing flood victims (Figure 2)
geographic information systems (GIS) tools and visual representations demonstrate a clear need to promote an immersive, interactive user interface that “supports multistage inquiries” to connect disaster resilience with spatial thinking [14]. With this motivating perspective of traditional GIS in mind, we looked to the growing field of serious geogames to provide a unique learning experience to connect GIS tools and visual representations with disaster resilience spatial thinking skills [4]
Summary
Recent hurricanes impacting the Caribbean and the United States’ Atlantic coastlines—such as Maria, Irma, Sandy, and Harvey—have proven the need for at-risk community disaster resilience.The challenge of disaster resilience will only be greater in the coming years—scholars of disaster policy and climatologists predict increases in storm frequency and subsequent costs in the near future [1]. Exponential growth in populations, increased population density along coastal areas, and rapid infrastructure development all exacerbate the impacts of already intensifying natural disasters from climate change [2,3]. Impacts from such disasters continue to reveal disaster preparedness gaps. 2. Which GIS tools and visual representations best connect disaster resilience with spatial thinking? 3. What are the best practices for serious game design that incorporate spatial thinking, GIS tools, and visual representations for disaster resilience to achieve learning outcomes?
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