Development of a gamified application to enhance community education on risk- sensitive urban development

Abstract

Flooding is the most significant natural hazard that Sri Lankans experience annually. The education and awareness associated with it remain traditional, with teachers feeding students with their expertise. The traditional educational mode needs to change to a more exciting and engaging mode. Globally, disaster education has already upgraded to an interactive an innovative level. Use of gamification or serious gaming to provide disaster education to the children can be considered as an example for such innovative learning and teaching model. This model is successfully applied in disaster education in countries such as Australia, The United States of America, New Zealand, Japan, Philippines, Italy and many more. However, such gamified applications are either limited to board games or do not have comprehensive learning experience. Therefore, this study focuses on developing a desktop gamified application to improve flood disaster education for school children. The methodology was designed under four phases: (a) Initiation; (b) Production; (c) Testing and (d) Releasing. After the said four phases the developed game was tested using 175 children and youngsters as the sample. Two testing iteration has been completed on the game prototype and final game is developed for launch. More than 85% of the participants responded favorably to the gamified application, which also indicated that they had raised awareness of floods. This research contributes to the growing field of serious gaming and gamification in disaster education by integrating cognitive, behavioral, and experiential learning theories into an interactive digital platform. The study also provides an empirical framework for assessing the effectiveness of gamified applications in knowledge retention and user engagement. The project delivers an interactive, scalable, and replicable educational tool that can be adapted for broader disaster preparedness initiatives. The insights from this study can inform policymakers, educators, and game developers in designing effective, engaging, and context-specific disaster education programs for vulnerable communities