Disaster Defense

About the project:

With the Worldbank Group, we created a heavily modified version of Minecraft where earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and floods are a constant threat to the world, and building your house of resilient materials and by resilient methods is important. Raising your house on stilts, reinforcing it with bamboo and helping Minecraft villagers do the same to their houses is all part of making everyday life work in this rough world.

The ‘Resilient World’ project is being deployed in countries at high risk of natural disasters stemming from climate change, teaching children vital lessons on how to build their houses and the consequences of doing so. Through playing our map, young people can educate themselves to better protect their own in their adult life, in a period of time where natural disasters will only be a more regular and more severe occurrence.

Lessons

Throughout the map students will go through several lessons, all tied together in one combined narrative towards saving their village. The emotional attachment to characters and houses in the village as well as the motivation of completing the game with a high score, keeps students engaged with the learning objectives, as they know they have to utilize the acquired knowledge to save the village.

Lesson 1: Sustainable building

How spending more resources and better craftmanship on a building initial, will drive down cost in the long run both financially and environmentally.

Lesson 2: Earthquakes

The effects of an earthquake on a built environment, and how resilient buildings perform significantly better.

Lesson 3: Building with bamboo

The students learn to harvest and build with flexible bamboo, making houses that endure earthquakes better.

Lesson 4: Floods

Environmental changes cause more storm floods. The students see how this affects poorly placed houses and how beach houses can be constructed to deal with floods.

Lesson 5: Stilted houses

The player once again has to increase the village’s resilience score by raising houses near water level up onto stilts.

Lesson 6: Coral reef restoration

The students learn of chain effects in nature. This is applied in an example where coral reefs can hold back a storm flood. Students then have to restore the coral reefs around the island.

Lesson 7: Hurricanes

A hurricane tears through the lands. Students learn about strapped roofs and apply this to the village.

Lesson 7 - advanced: Bridges

Students looking for a challenge will utilize advanced materials such as reinforced concrete to produce a bridge spanning the valley.

Lesson 8 - Mine collapse

The mines have collapsed due to an earthquake. There are also partial floodings. Students have to apply what has been learned to save the miners and restore the mine itself.

Lesson 9 - Grow the village

Students grow the village with houses of their own design, testing them against the forces of nature via the regular natural disasters happening on this island.