Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Disaster Platform - Helping Communities Build Resilience to Disasters via Social Networking, Gamification and Relationship Building
EPA Contract Number: 68HERC23C0022Title: Disaster Platform - Helping Communities Build Resilience to Disasters via Social Networking, Gamification and Relationship Building
Investigators: Schreiber, Anne
Small Business: GoodGames
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: December 1, 2022 through May 31, 2023
Project Amount: $100,000
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I (2023) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: SBIR - Water , SBIR - Homeland Security , SBIR - Sustainability , SBIR - Air and Climate
Description:
A disaster-focused social networking platform that helps to mitigate the negative effects of current social media platforms and build community resilience to disasters, homeland security threats, and extreme weather (particularly extreme heat). This platform will help community members effectively communicate with one another, public safety organizations and community leaders before, during and after a disaster-related event. The platform will be designed with disaster-related communication as the primary intention and with the location and security features currently lacking in popular social media platforms. Additionally, a solo casual game will be incorporated into the platform with the intention of helping to educate and empower community members about disaster-related scenarios (with extreme heat initially being the primary focus) so that they can better prepare for, and build resilience to, future disasters.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Throughout the 6-month Phase I award all three objectives, and their corresponding tasks, were successfully completed with promising results. Research revealed that effective communication from disaster-related organizations and community leaders, prior to the onset of a disaster, results in the best outcomes and the highest level of preparedness from community members.
Furthermore, key demographic metrics (e.g. age, culture, socioeconomic status) were identified that contribute to a communities vulnerability to a disaster and an individual's willingness to utilize the information that they are given to prepare for a disaster-related event (level of preparedness). Overall, the results of the studies that were conducted throughout the 6-month Phase I award highlighted the importance of geo-local features, multidirectional communication, official community use, and fast and effective data analysis as essential parts of an effective disaster platform.
We successfully determined the requirements to verify the accounts and posts of individual users and organizations using a combination of physical mailed media, self-reported information, circle of trust methodology and matching of records and data input (likely with the assistance of AI). The content moderation policy currently leans heavily towards a combination of client reporting and AI filtering.
The disaster preparedness game was fully designed with points, timers, informational prompts and competition features to make it as engaging and educational as possible. The game was successfully tested by 16 participants in Nebraska and Maine. Each participant played the game (virtually) and then filled out an anonymous feedback form about their experience. The games were run by three different facilitators (anonymously posing as AI bots) who then documented their observations in detail.
The disaster preparedness game was determined to be easy to use, fun and moderately educational. Slight tweaks should be made to the instructions, preparedness statements and game mechanics in future stages of development to ensure a user-friendly and educational experience. We anticipate that many of the challenges that were uncovered in the initial testing stage would be resolved once the game is integrated into a platform with an actual AI bot as opposed to a human facilitator.
In terms of the technical development of the platform, our initial findings showed that developing the disaster platform from the ground up using a MERN, or similar application stack, was cost prohibitive due to the complexity of the platform. It was decided that building the platform atop an existing platform would be most advantageous to deploying an MVP. Our research led us to utilize the Mastodon platform as a basis for our disaster platform and we still believe this is the best possible path forward. Mastodon brings nearly 40% of the desired functionality to our platform via an open-source solution. However, the 60% of development needed, principally made up of the need for government agencies and other disaster/hazard response agencies to have access to the platform for bidirectional communication, combined with the need to develop a game atop the same platform (or adjacent to the platform as described above), is beyond our ability to achieve with reasonable results with the financial resources available. Given sufficient resources, financial and technical expertise, the platform could be developed to an MVP product that could then be taken to market.
Conclusions:
The Phase I conclusions are that there is strong evidence in support of a disaster-related social networking platform and corresponding preparedness game. Research confirms that there is, indeed, a need for better learning and dialogue across stakeholders and an enhanced flow of real-time information that can assist distributed decision-making at the community level before, during, and after a disaster. Based on our experience researching, mocking up and testing the
disaster platform we conclude that while it is technically feasible to create the platform based on our documented approach, it is not economically feasible for GoodGames to perform the development work required to bring the platform to fruition. While the tasks were successfully completed with positive outcomes, they also point to the need for substantially more financial resources than are available to GoodGames at this time. While the ideas behind the platform, its usefulness as an information-sharing resource to communities, its ability to connect upstream disaster response agencies directly with those in need and its ability to share information horizontally between stakeholders, such as community members and community leaders, are sound, the technology, legal liability, interagency communication and marketing requirements are ultimately outside the scope of what GoodGames can achieve with its limited resources at this time. We believe there is still a dire need to enhance multi-lateral communication within communities and effectively prepare them for disaster-related events, and that gamified learning and social networking are the most effective techniques to do so. While GoodGames no longer believes that we are the company to effectively bring this product to market, we sincerely hope that another, better-resourced organization, will continue this important work.
Ultimately, We have observed that the commercialization of a product like the one proposed isn’t nearly as feasible as anticipated. Everything centered on the launch of a fully functional social network that would allow users to report and discuss disaster-related issues as they pertain to their geographic area. Upon further research, the complexity of government regulations, department regulations, and governmental and organizational oversight creates a much more complex, legally challenging and expensive system and product than originally anticipated.
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.