Floodsim is a flash-based serious game

Serious game

A serious game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to products used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion,...

 created by Norwich Union

Norwich Union

Norwich Union was the name given to insurance company Aviva's British arm before June 2009. It was originally established in 1797. It is the biggest life insurance provider in the United Kingdom, and has a strong position in motor insurance...

 in cooperation with Playgen in 2008 in order to raise awareness of the dangers that flooding present to the United Kingdom. The goal of the game is to protect the people of the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 from flood

Flood

A flood is an overflow of an expanse of water that submerges land. The EU Floods directive defines a flood as a temporary covering by water of land not normally covered by water...

s that damage the economy and lives of the people through an assortment of realistic means over a time span of three years.

Key Themes

In order to help raise awareness of the problem of flooding, Floodsim highlights:

• Long term strategy and creating targets for flood prevention
• The importance of better flood planning
• The importance of getting communities involved in flood prevention
• Finding new ways to reduce surface water flooding by promoting better drainage
• The option of flood resilient measures for houses and businesses.

Gameplay

It is a turn-based strategy game runs off a simple drag and drop interface. The game is broken into three years, each with different requirements. Each year ends when either the player has run out of money or chooses to advance the game forward.

Reactions

The project also has received backing from the then Environment Minister Phil Woolas

Phil Woolas

Philip James Woolas was a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Oldham East and Saddleworth from his election in 1997 to 2010. He was the Minister of State for Borders and Immigration in the Home Office, as well as being the Minister of State for the Treasury...

 who said “The floods of 2007 show just how serious flooding can be, and I am glad to see that this project has been developed to enable people to have a greater understanding of the risk of flooding. A number of decisions need to be taken when we look at managing the risk of flooding – including our annual spend on flood defenses, where and how we build new houses, and the emergency response procedures we have in place for times of flood. This game gives the game player the opportunity to make informed decisions about all of these policy areas.”

In 2009 a paper was presented at SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH

SIGGRAPH is the name of the annual conference on computer graphics convened by the ACM SIGGRAPH organization. The first SIGGRAPH conference was in 1974. The conference is attended by tens of thousands of computer professionals...

Symposium on Video Games regarding the societal impact of FloodSim.