09 Aug Breaking Barriers: Gamifying for Enhanced Disaster Resilience
Disasters have the potential to disrupt society’s functioning on many levels. They can cause widespread loss of life, property damage, and/or disruption of essential services such as public utilities or transportation systems. Disasters can also create secondary problems such as disease spread and long-term environmental damage.
According to the United Nations country classification, 91% of deaths from weather, climate, and water hazards occurred in developing economies from 1970 through 2019. The proportion of deaths occurring in low- and lower-middle-income countries remains similar when we look at the World Bank’s country classification history.
These disasters affect both the community and businesses, so it’s important to have disaster resilience in place.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 93% of businesses that suffer a significant data loss are out of business within five years, so backing up and storing data off-site is very important.
Businesses of all sizes should put a business continuity plan in place, which helps companies think through the issues that can disrupt their business, plan steps to limit the effects of identified potential hazards and identify critical processes or operations to remain open after a disaster impact.
What is Disaster Resilience?
Disaster resilience depends on the degree to which individuals, communities, and public and private organizations are capable of learning from past disasters and reducing their risks to future ones. Business disaster resilience is the ability of a business to survive, adapt and grow even when experiencing negative events such as a change in market conditions or natural disasters.
Businesses are becoming more and more aware of the need to be resilient, both in their internal operations and externally. Resilience is the ability to thrive, prosper, and succeed despite hard times. This includes being prepared for disasters, knowing how to respond to them when they occur, and understanding how to be connected both before and after a disaster.
Disaster Resilience and Preparedness Through Gamification
There’s a study showing that gamification can be incorporated into disaster emergency planning. In recent years, the concept of gamification – i.e., using gaming elements in non-gaming contexts – has become a popular approach to motivating people in various actions. Not only does gamification increase community engagement, interactivity, and behavioral outcomes, but it also influences democratic processes.
Enhanced disaster resilience in communities and businesses allows better anticipation of disasters and better planning to reduce disaster losses—rather than waiting for an event to occur and paying for it afterward.
However, building the culture and practice of disaster resilience is a complicated, time-intensive process that can be expensive.
By using a gamified approach, GoodGames can help in practicing disaster resilience simpler for organizations, communities, and businesses. We have affordable serious games to help improve disaster resilience.
