Student Success Stories Archive
Team Disaster Games
Across the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responds to and works to prevent disasters. A critical piece of FEMA’s mission is ensuring a well-prepared general population, which greatly increases the efficiency and likelihood of success in these emergency situations. Typically, FEMA hosts large scale, in-person role playing simulations to help prepare individuals for disaster response. However, when the pandemic broke out, FEMA was no longer able to conduct their in-person training sessions and was looking for a suitable alternative.
Making Disaster Preparedness Accessible
The Team
Torin Johnson
• University Innovation Fellow
• Graduate TA for Innov8X (Hacking for Homeland Security)
• Former Project Engineering Intern at JR Clark Enterprises
• Former Venture Capital Intern at Rockies Venture Club
• BS in Computer Science and Robotics & Intelligent Systems
Maxwell Sissman
• Senior Scientific Analyst at OBXtek
• Senior Consultant at Artlin Consulting
• MS in Space Resources from Colorado School of Mines
• MS in Systems Engineering from the George Washington University
• BS in Aerospace Studies from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University
Tabish Iqbal
• Founder / Energy Analyst at Ceres Energy Solutions
• Former Finance / Accounts Officer at Mari Petroleum Company Limited
• Former Finance Executive at Pakistan Oilfields Limited
• MS in Mineral & Energy Economics from Colorado School of Mines
• BBA, Finance & Investment from National University of Sciences and Technology
Problem Sponsor
FEMA Region VIII
Original Problem Statement
The National Preparedness Division needs a safe and interactive way to run large-scale emergency simulations in order to improve crisis management skills and validate the response capabilities of the various communities.
Beneficiary Discovery Interviews
25
The Innovation
Across the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) responds to and works to prevent disasters. A critical piece of FEMA’s mission is ensuring a well-prepared general population, which greatly increases the efficiency and likelihood of success in these emergency situations. Typically, FEMA hosts large scale, in-person role playing simulations to help prepare individuals for disaster response. However, when the pandemic broke out, FEMA was no longer able to conduct their in-person training sessions and was looking for a suitable alternative.
With this new challenge at hand, FEMA Region VIII, which covers the mountain region of the United States, tasked Team Disaster Games at Colorado School of Mines with educating the general public on disaster preparation and response.
As the team began their investigation into this problem, they spoke with experts at organizations such as FEMA, the Red Cross, NARA and the Disaster Institute in order to better understand disaster preparedness challenges. Through this beneficiary discovery process, the team found that a primary challenge with educating the public is that the training sessions are resource intensive, which limited the number of individuals they would be able to reach.
In addition to the resource heavy nature of these training sessions, the team also found that there was little incentive for the general public to participate in these disaster preparedness training sessions. The team compared the attitude toward visiting a doctor. Something you should do but may not always be a top priority to do in your free time. While ensuring a well-prepared general population would greatly increase the efficiency and likelihood of success for emergency responders, they also found that there was little incentive for the general public to engage.
With this in mind, the team decided that their solution must be both engaging and educational. While there was plenty of disaster engagement material available, it was the engagement that proved to be the primary challenge.
With this information the team began to explore low fidelity simulations, such as the one created by NARA and iThrive. Initially, the team considered creating their own game (board or video) to engage their desired population segment. However, the team soon realized that creating and marketing an entirely new game would be very challenging, and beneficiary discovery interviews proved that an unfamiliar game with a government seal of approval quickly lost its appeal.
From there, the team went on to consider “reskinning” games, specifically those popular with our target demographic. This would involve taking known and popular games among their demographic and modifying them to include disaster preparedness scenarios. The team tested this concept by reskinning popular games “Jenga” and “Exploding Kittens”, and watched for behavioral changes in action and conversation of those who participated as a way to validate our hypotheses.
Ultimately, the team took their findings and published a White Paper on the use of games to educate their segment of the general population (college students) on disaster preparedness. Though the team tested their hypotheses on college students, they believe this can be an example case for educating the larger population. The team focused on creating engaging games, suitable for a small group with limited resources.
Though the team does not have plans to continue with the project themselves, they hope to hand their work on to a future Hacking for Homeland Security team to continue with this research and turn their pretoype into a prototype that FEMA may actually be able to implement.
Presentation
Team Disaster Game’s
Hacking for Homeland Security Experience
Growing Their Disaster Preparedness Network
One of the highlights of the course for Team Disaster Games was the “flipped classroom” style of learning, where students share their findings with the instructors, rather than listening to a lecture. This methodology challenged Team Disaster Games to connect with experts in the field to validate, or disprove, their hypotheses.
Torin shared that he really enjoyed that he was able to meet and network with people working in the disaster preparedness space. For Tabish, the interview process was his favorite part of the course and was “ultimately what led the team to find a successful solution to the problem we were tasked with addressing.”
The team also highlighted that the interview process gave them the opportunity to have an iterative problem solving process. It allowed them to focus on the problem first and made the challenge they were facing more digestible. By speaking with a wide range of beneficiaries, the team was able to focus on the pretotype they were developing and figure out what the real problem was, rather than going down the wrong path without understanding what beneficiaries really needed.
Getting Outside of the Classroom
For Tabish and his teammates, the course had a steep learning curve. The team was confronted with an unfamiliar problem and were tasked with using unfamiliar entrepreneurship strategies. However, he shared that the course helped him improve the ways in which he thinks through problem solving. For Maxwell, he similarly stated that using the Mission Model Canvas made considering both the business layer in addition to the public benefit element became more default as the course went on.