As we approach the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, little progress has been made in preparing communities for better outcomes in disasters.
The 1,836 deaths in Katrina exposed an alarming lack of engagement by a large number of citizens on preparedness. Of those who perished in the tragic disaster, 22 percent were physically unable to evacuate, 14 percent were physically disabled, 23 percent stayed in New Orleans to care for a physically disabled person, and 25 percent were suffering from a chronic disease. Despite the dangers of our reality, we are constantly witnessing an unacceptable lack of awareness when it comes to preparing our most valuable and vulnerable members of our society – our children and special needs citizens.
PrepBiz™ Gamification App Solution
PrepBiz™ 1.0 gamification app educates children, youth, adults and visually impaired individuals on best practice recommendation responses to disasters, hazards and active shooter incidents. Players must overcome challenges by choosing the safest course of action to avoid obstacles, hurdles and mishaps to reach safe points with pop up boxes alerting to common hazards and other information related to the incidents while remaining safe. PrepBiz™ 1.0 (VI) is an audio-only action/adventure game for mobile phones, tablets and computers where ears replace eyes thanks to a very innovative technology: binaural sound and players are guided only by 3D sound and live the adventure by controlling their Avatar with multi-point tactile gestures.
PrepWorld LLC, (www.prepworld.org) the parent company and designers of the PrepBiz™ gamification system and Project Starfish (www.pstarfish.org) have taken the challenge to explore not only if games could be effective in emergency preparedness, but how and why.
We feel videogames can be a great strategic partner to emergency preparedness and as such deserves fundamental investment of time, capital and attention from key stakeholders in both the public and private sector. The field needs more funding and research activities to grow this budding field.
We ask that you support our efforts in this groundbreaking venture by supporting our crowdfunding campaign “Keeping Safe in Disasters” at www.gofundme.com.
