Building community resilience in the face of a disaster
Desperately seeking sandbags. Willing to trade walkie-talkies for box fans. Choosing between helicopters or rescue boats. It’s all part of disaster preparedness and response, whether in real life or in the Extreme Event simulation game developed by LabX at the National Academy of Sciences.
No one knew about COVID-19 when GVI started working with LabX to produce these two promo videos:
The videos encourage emergency managers to use Extreme Event to educate the public about what goes on behind the scenes during an emergency. While Extreme Event doesn’t include a pandemic scenario, it does put participants in the shoes of emergency managers facing a flood, hurricane, or earthquake. In a fast-paced, engaging hour and a half, they must meet the challenge of locating and using community resources to mitigate the crisis. The exercise builds community resilience by helping to build relationships before disaster strikes.
LabX is a public outreach program of the National Academy of Sciences.
