Space Apps Challenge 2018

We proudly introduce to you our final project, "Disaster Simulator" - an easy to use mobile game, which offers users a better understanding of how a natural disaster can look like, what to expect and how to react. Much more than that, users - which would be especially children and young people - can train their reaction time, improve it and... try to stay alive!

Motivation:
In the last decades, extreme climate events, such as heat waves, cold waves, intense storms, earthquakes and droughts have become more frequent and intense. Further increases are expected to occur at unprecedented levels therefore resilience development is an urgent need for all individuals.

Our application:
The game has several levels, with different natural hazards and difficulties.
Each level has its own "tutorial", containing information about the specific disaster, how can it develop, options of all the possible actions that need to be taken and what to prioritize.
All the levels are available from the very beginning, the purpose being not to unlock them, but to obtain maximum stars at each level, by fast reaction and correctness of the actions taken and their order. By practicing, the user will develop more confidence on his/her actions in a eventually real life situation.

Technologies used:
Each level contains an Augmented Reality scene, where the user controls a "puppet", by pressing buttons on the screen and coordinates it according to the tutorial in order to save it. We chose using AR because of its capacity to represent the situations visually more clearly, being in the same time more attractive for the young generations.

Further development:
By now, we have developed one single level, out of countless levels we could implement. A further improvement can be rewarding the user with Experience Points & Coins, which they could use to buy survival equipment from a store, helping them get more stars in the future levels. In the end, they would acknowledge the importance of having specific objects easy reachable in the house, like a lantern, face masks, plywoods etc, which could eventually save their life.