Fostering student participation in disaster risk reduction through disaster video games

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (Sendai Framework), the New Zealand National Disaster Resilience Strategy and the Australian National Strategy for Disaster Resilience fully integrate the concept of education into the overall goal of disaster risk reduction (DRR). This paper summarises a video game research project using three series of case studies. This process has led to genuine and meaningful outcomes based on the needs of teachers and students and offers a potential pathway to address gaps in policy and practice to reduce the risks associated with disasters.

The authors suggest that:

• Video games can become valuable teaching tools for teachers, and in collaboration with other tools to encourage participation, can be a potential pathway towards building greater awareness surrounding disaster and DRR.
• Using video games to support formal education can also enable opportunities to transcend and make connections between the classroom, home and in the local context.
• Video games, however, should not be considered a panacea to bridging the gap between policy, curricula and teaching practices but as one possible pathway to address current gaps.