Gamifying Humanitarian Action and Disaster Risk Management Training

Play a Game

What do you instinctively do when you want to learn something?

Do you bury yourself in books or burn hours surfing Wikipedia? Or do you engage in physical activities and experiment around?

There are many ways of learning because there are many kinds of learners. Some like to mentally grasp a subject first before acting on it. While others jump into the action and study the subject on the fly. Both can work.

But what if you like to combine both to maximize your learning? Go ahead and play a game!

Why Gamify?

Games are not only entertaining. They can help you discover your interests virtually, solve problems from another perspective, and develop productive skills for a booming industry. Learning can be so much fun!

It is not surprising that games are used in humanitarian action and disaster risk management training too. That’s right.

Workshops demonstrate that using game elements increases engagement, encourages collaboration, enhances innovative thinking, and makes lessons more practical. Studies also show that gamification can raise a player’s disaster risk awareness – improving their ability to identify hazards, trigger empathy, and undertake preventive and responsive actions.

Interested now? Here’s a list of online games you can start playing around with. All you need is Wi-Fi and a mobile device.

Prepare to Win

Have you heard the saying, “Failing to plan is preparing to fail”?

Well, yes. In some instances, you can ‘wing’ it. But not in disaster risk management contexts where many lives are at stake.

As a student, the most practical preparation you can make besides studying about disaster risk management is to have an emergency kit handy. But where do you start?

In Build a Kit, you can join Gayle and her friends in going through different locations to gather essential supplies needed for an emergency. You will have to pick the right item for you and your family at each level. And you are actually building an emergency kit checklist as you go along. The best thing about it: You can print it out when you are done. Great!

Are you ready to step it up? Try the Disaster Master. It is not enough that you have an emergency kit. You will also need to know what to do when a disaster strikes. You will have to survive 8 levels by making the right choices. Make a mistake and the game ends. Each level represents a different hazard scenario like hurricane/blackout, home fire, and tsunami/earthquake. Cool feature: You can print out chapters of your own graphic novel as you play.

Can You Stop It?

Want to play and learn to Stop Disasters? There’s a game for you too.

You will learn about the risks posed by natural hazards and ways to manage your resources to reduce its impact. There are five realistic scenarios to play including wildfire. Game time will depend on the type of disaster you are seeking to prevent and the skill level you prefer to play in.

This is a single player game. But you can play collaboratively with your friends by discussing the best course of action to take. The challenge: Some elements of the game are random so some things will be different every time you play. There is no ‘perfect solution’ to each scenario.

In the Frontline

Want to learn to save lives in conflict zones and play at Fornite at the same time? Thanks to Liferun, it’s possible!

This game gives players the chance to learn the rules for protecting non-participants, the wounded, and prisoners of war as set out in International Humanitarian Law. 

All you need is to play with a code provided in its website and you will be able to experience how the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement helps civilians in war through…wait for it…Fortnite creative mode! You couldn’t get more innovative than that.

There you go. Three games that you can play to learn humanitarian action and disaster risk management. Remember to enjoy and have fun!

Up next: Ever wondered how DRRM is related to peacebuilding, sustainable development, and climate change? In the next article, we will look at the BIG picture and see how humanity’s greatest challenges are linked together.

Want to learn more about Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (DRRM)? Thinking of starting a career in Humanitarian Affairs? Or are you seeking personal development in this field? The General Academic Strand (GAS) strand offers Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction as a core subject for Senior High School students.

Learn more about DRMM and how you can take action about it. Read more articles like this on the Commune blog section at Edukasyon.ph now!

Sources

Humanitarian Leadership Academy. Solving humanitarian challenges through on and offline games. 2017.

ICRC. Liferun. 2020.

Ready.gov. Build a Kit Game. 2019.

Ready.gov. Disaster Master. 2019.

Solinska-Nowak et al. “An overview of serious games for disaster risk management – Prospects and limitations for informing actions to arrest increasing risk”. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, vol. 31, October 2018, pp. 1013-1029.

UNDRR. Stop Disasters!. 2018.