Flooded - A Location-Based Game for Promoting Citizens' Flood Preparedness

Abstract

The occurrence of floods have increased in recent years. Despite of this, studies have shown a low level of flood preparedness among citizens. The public's lack of awareness of the consequences of floods is something that needs to be improved. Serious games have been shown to have the potential to engage the public and raise awareness.The main objective of this thesis was to create a design for a location-based serious game that can be used to promote citizens' flood preparedness. Potential learning goals and drivers for collaboration, exploration and engagement were explored to accomplish the objective.An analysis of location-based games, and theory of flood management and preparedness were used as a basis for the game design. The game design was used to guide the development of a prototype, which was evaluated with three groups of players to determine the game's engagement and learning potential. The work resulted in a prototype for a location-based serious game for Android, called Flooded, where players can move around in their local environment and complete quests that are connected to real flooding scenarios. The game aims to sensitize the players to the dangers and consequences of flooding and promotes exploration and collaboration, to teach knowledge of the territory and collaboration skills, which are useful tools in a flooding situation. Motivational drivers such as rewards, a leaderboard and time pressure were used to create an engaging gameplay experience.Ten design guidelines were created that can guide future development of location-based games for flood preparedness. The guidelines highlights the importance of addressing usability and GPS issues, and underlines elements that a game in the context of flood preparedness should contain, such as exploration, collaboration, engagement and sensitization