ENHANCING AWARENESS TO FLOOD RISK THROUGH HANDS-ON MODELS AND SERIOUS GAMES

The awareness of the population to the risk perception is an issue of growing importance in the mitigation of natural hazards. During a natural event, awareness of the dangers and self-protection behaviours can mitigate risk situations. In this context, the introduction of educational, informational, and public engagement tools that facilitate the understanding of the risk and improve its perception is certainly an effective way to contribute to mitigation. The construction of physical models is traditionally a very good method to facilitate the understanding of complex phenomena, such as floods. Here, we propose the use of a physical model of flood scenario made with the famous LEGO bricks, to facilitate understanding and perception of hydraulic risk. Based on the LEGO model, recently a video game version has been preliminary designed. Using the Minecraft platform, produced by Microsoft, an actual serious game will be implemented on flood risk that has the city of Firenze as the reference scenario. The flood scenarios of the past and those resulting from the hydraulic models developed by the research group will be used to implement “role-playing games” related to the design of mitigation and hydraulic risk management measures. In order to develop a method for the evaluation of effectiveness of the implemented serious game, a questionnaire was used, referring to some models available in literature. The elaborated questionnaire aims to provide a solid support to specific learning goals in terms of knowledge, skill and attitude, in order to assess the game quality and effectiveness as well as to contribute to its improvement and efficient adoption in practice.