Flooded: A Location-based Game for Promoting Citizens’ Preparedness to Flooding Situations

Abstract

With the global climate changes we can expect an increased occurrence of floods, even in areas not previously affected by flooding. Having the possibility to add to the traditional crisis management organization workforce also a higher number of citizens is thus very important. Despite of this, the general public seems to be ignorant of the possibility and consequences of a major flood. In this paper we present a game for promoting citizens’ preparedness to flooding situations, called Flooded. Flooded was designed using current flooding management elements, but having as main objective citizens’ sensitizations. Results of the evaluations show that the game was successful in promoting flood awareness, especially in terms of increasing the player’s knowledge of the local territory, but that a proper briefing and debriefing session is required to facilitate learning, retention and reflection.