Stop Disasters! Or maybe not in Sri Lanka…

ICTs in general, Interesting content on ICT4Peace, Links 1 Minute

Stop Disasters

I’ve blogged extensively about Serious Games here, and was interested to read Paul Currion’s missive about Stop Disasters!, a new, Flash based games that is now on the web released by the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.

I agree with Paul that Stop Disasters! is a fantastic game, addictive even. The UI takes a bit of getting used to, but is easy enough to grasp, even if you’ve never played the Sims in your life.

The game features a couple of scenarios to choose from: tsunami, hurricane, wild fire, earthquake and flood – all of them with their unique settings, operational boundaries and conditions etc. You can choose a very large map area of a smaller size – beware, the larger map areas are extremely challenging and give an idea of just how challenging and difficult real world disaster management and preventative planning can be.

UNISDR‘s looking out for more scenarios – perhaps a good opportunity for the likes of Lirneasia and their path-breaking work on dam related hazards to step in and help develop.

Perhaps by games we can help raise the awareness of and teach that which serious academic and research papers cannot to those in power and in positions of authority to help prevent or plan for the next disaster, in Sri Lanka and elsewhere in the world.

Published by Sanjana

An Ashoka, Rotary World Peace and TED Fellow, I have since 2002 used, studied and advocated Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to strengthen peace, human rights & democratic governance. I founded in 2006 and till June 2020 edited the award-winning Groundviews, Sri Lanka's first civic media website. From 2002-2020 I was a Senior Researcher at the Centre for Policy Alternatives. I pioneered both the use of social media for activism and online citizen journalism/civic media in Sri Lanka, including setting up South Asia's first Twitter and Facebook accounts for civic media, in 2007. Having started digital security training for human rights activists in 2010, I continue to advise civil society on digital hygiene, mass and personal surveillance, privacy and secure communications to date. I also curate a comprehensive digital archive of material linked to peace and conflict in Sri Lanka, since 2002. I specialise in, advise and train on social media communications strategy, countering-violence extremism online, web-based activism, online advocacy and grounded, context-based, platform-specific social media research. My work experience over two-decades spans five continents. Through the ICT4Peace Foundation and since 2006, I help strengthen information management during crises and work on countering violent extremism online. For over a decade, this included leading the Foundation's work on these lines with the United Nations and other multi-lateral organisations involved in peacebuilding, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs. Since 2008, I have worked in South Asia, South East Asia, North Africa, Europe and the Balkans to capture, disseminate and archive inconvenient truths in austere, violent contexts. I completed doctoral studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, looking at the symbiotic relationship between offline unrest and online instigation of hate and harm in Sri Lanka and, in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre in 2019, facilitated by leading research based on New Zealand's first ever Data for Good grant by Twitter.

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