Saving Private Citizens

Yesterday I discovered the Stop Disasters game. It's free to play and doesn't even require you to download or install anything. The game prosents five scenarios in order to educate the user about what measures contribute to making populations and infrastructure safer from various types of natural disasters. You are given time and a budget to select upgrades of various types and costs. At the end of each scenario you are graded according to loss of life and property.

While I applaud the concept of using a video game to help instruct people on the issues and resources needed to successfully prepare and protect people from natural disasters, I have to question what the game is teaching. In the first scenario at Easy difficulty, the goal is to "provide accommodations for 320 people, build a hospital, a school plus two hotels to increase tourism in this area." So, if you are in an area known to be at risk, why are you building hotels to bring even more people into the danger area? That makes sense if the goal is to maximize wealth and employment for the island, but doesn't seem to make sense if the goal is to minimize damage or casualties from disasters. At least the game goes on to provide options for protecting the structures themselves, but I would rather plan on how many people could be accomadated with the best protection - not stuff a bunch of people on the island and make tradeoffs to protect them as good as is possible. Anyway,I went through the exercise and though I lost 50 people and the school was destroyed, but that still was a passing grade. I got a report on the "cost of damages" which was only with respect to the items in the game that were destroyed. It's a shame there isn't any further analysis on economic impact due to potential loss or increase of tourism, wage and cost increases to employ workers in the rebuilding process, etc.

Even more interesting would be to compete with a neighboring island and then the one that survives best draws capital, labor, etc. from the loser. There could also be a way for the islands to trade or buy excess materials with each other. This could also lead to the lesson that cooperation leads to the mutual benefit of both communities.

Being from Miami, the second simluation - a hurricane simulation - was more up my alley. This time I didn't have to lure tourists to their death. Just make sure the boats are secure and the people are protected. Oh - and this time you are encouraged to protect the banana trees and cane fields because of their positive economic impact on the island. In that one I only lost 4 lives but $5,900. This apparently was good enough to earn me a silver medal - yay me!

I'll let you discover the other three scenarios on your own but without too much more in terms of programming I think this game could contribute more to communicating the near term and longer term effects of destruction within a community.