All Hazards Preparedness Game

Background:

Traditional disaster preparedness research often involves real-time studies during actual emergencies, which can cause significant distress for participants and pose ethical challenges. This is especially critical when focusing on vulnerable populations such as older adults. Recognizing these limitations, this innovation's development team sought a controlled, risk-free method to improve preparedness training without exposing participants to real disaster environments. The team focused initial testing with older adults.

Technology Overview:

The All-Hazards Preparedness Game employs virtual reality technology to simulate various disaster scenarios, including evacuation procedures and shelter-in-place directives. Users engage in realistic decision-making processes within these simulated environments, allowing them to practice and enhance their preparedness skills. Built using platforms like Unity and Blender, the software integrates newly developed code representing half of the program’s structure, ensuring a tailored and innovative experience. This technology addresses the ethical issues related to disaster research by eliminating the need to study participants during actual emergencies, thus reducing stress and potential harm. Moreover, immersive VR training fosters improved cognitive engagement compared to traditional methods, which can translate into more effective real-world responses. By targeting older adults—a group often overlooked in disaster preparedness initiatives—the game helps reduce the demand on first responders by promoting individual disaster readiness. However, while we started with older adults to ensure it was usable for that population, but we expect AllHazards to be used and benefit all age groups.

Advantages:

•    Provides a safe, controlled environment for disaster preparedness training without exposing participants to real emergency situations.
•    Tailored to consider the needs of older adults, and modifiable to enhance inclusivity for various populations in disaster readiness efforts.
•    Utilizes immersive virtual reality to improve decision-making skills, leading to better protective action decisions.
•    Reduces ethical concerns associated with traditional quick-response disaster studies.
•    Incorporates significant new software development, ensuring innovative and customized simulation experiences.
•    Potentially lowers pressure on emergency responders by improving individual preparedness.

Applications:

•    Disaster preparedness training programs for individuals, households (and caregivers) that could be deployed at community centers, and healthcare facilities, and schools
•    Educational tools for emergency management organizations aiming to improve public readiness.
•    Use by insurance companies to incentivize customers to take preparedness actions that could limit damage to property, bodily injury, and death.
•    Use by policymakers and planners to assess the effectiveness of preparedness strategies in a simulated environment.
•    Incorporation into virtual conference presentations and workshops focused on disaster resilience.

Intellectual Property Summary:

Patent Pending

Stage of Development:

TRL 5

Licensing Status:

This technology is available for licensing.