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™ 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) will be an audio-only action/adventure game for mobile phones, tablets and computers where ears replace eyes thanks to a very innovative technology: binaural sound. The visually impaired functional game offers an original sensory experience with a trailblazing video game that educates visually impaired individuals on best practice recommendations for preparedness. In this educational adventure game, the 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 has done lots of things that have really help to define the emergency preparedness and awareness space with one specific outcome when messaging –Engagement Knowledge!
We feel video games can be a great strategic partner to emergency preparedness and as such deserves fundamental investment of time, capital and attention from key stakeholders and public-private partnerships.
PrepWorld LLC in collaboration with 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. Right now we’re seeing the growing enthusiasm in the field of gamification as well as the sense that this is a field that clearly has a contribution to make to the field of emergency preparedness for many years to come going forward.
Project Starfish is an international business development group with a learning and opportunity platform for talented blind individuals. Project Starfish seeks to lower the unemployment (above 70%) rate among the adult blind population. Its “shared service” model allows emerging and start-up companies to share talented resources from an amazing talent pool of blind individuals who are virtually available and work on-demand, to help grow their business. Project Starfish offers support in marketing, sales, social media, business research, customer support, content writing and operations
We ask that you support our efforts in this groundbreaking venture by supporting our crowdfunding campaign “Keeping Safe in Disasters” at www.gofundme.com.
