The Role of Serious Games in Disaster and Safety Education: An Integrative Review

Abstract

One of the critical elements of catastrophe preparedness is a training of the disaster responders and society. However, conducting a live disaster training is costly and labor intensive. Hence, serious game (SG) may offer a possible solution as a method of disaster and safety education. Besides, the advancement of games for education and training has been increasingly used for decades. SG provides a challenging and realistic environment that can mimic actual setting of crisis and disaster situation. Furthermore, there are numerous of SG and applications that have been researched for disaster and safety training. Toward sustainable education and training in this field, it is important to clarify the potential of SG that can improve disaster awareness and skill. Therefore, this paper discusses SG’s role for disaster and safety training using an integrative review methodology. A process of the integrative review consisted of five steps to obtain the results, that is, identification of problems and purposes, definition of search strategy, assessment and analysis of the findings. The search criteria were applied to various electronic article databases relevant to information technology, disaster or emergency, and training. This integrative review found the key factor of SG for disaster and safety training. We finally conclude SG has a potential to deliver the disaster awareness through a virtual environment that could motivate learners to have a broader skill and knowledge to prepare the appropriate actions when a disaster occurred.