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.
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Hurricane Harvey Unstrapped: Experiencing Adaptive Tensions on the Edge of Chaos
This paper is based on the analysis of data collected as part of a research conducted through National Science Foundation (NSF) grant 1760504 – RAPID: Disaster Preparedness and Response within Communities Affected by Hurricane Harvey. Our co-autoethnographic study focused on response and
short-term recovery in Hurricane Harvey. It consisted of in-depth interviews conducted with emergency management officials, first responders, members of non-governmental organizations, civic leaders, spontaneous volunteers, and flooding victims coupled with an analysis of Crowdsource (spontaneously
created virtual platform for citizens’ response) data. Our results point to the phenomenon of unstrapping identified across standard operating procedures, organizational arrangements, formal communication flows, formal emergency management processes, and resource utilization protocols. While unstrapping
has been evidenced in our study to be perceived as threatening by emergency management and response entities, we adapt a complexity-informed worldview to propose unstrapping representing natural processes inherent to complex adaptive systems. Our study highlights unpredictability and change in
human and organizational systems and give rise to self-organization, self-regulation that ultimately gives rise to resilience and adaptability. Implications for emergency management and policy are discussed.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1760504
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10126438
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- WIT transactions on the built environment
- ISSN:
- 1743-3509
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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