Monsoon Flood Preparedness Strategy Game Built on Real Terrain for School Children

The problem: children in flood zones learn about floods from posters

Floods are now a regular part of life for millions of families in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The 2022 monsoon floods in Pakistan affected whole districts in Sindh, Balochistan and southern Punjab, and many of the people affected were children. Disaster preparedness is part of school programmes run by governments and NGOs, but it usually means a poster, a lecture or a drill once a year.

Children remember little of that. They do not see why a grain store should be raised, why a family should leave before the water arrives, or why the school on higher ground is a better shelter than the one by the canal. A well-designed game can show cause and effect in a way a poster cannot.

What already exists and the gap

• Stop Disasters!, an online game from the UN disaster risk reduction office (formerly UNISDR), lets players aged about 9 to 16 plan a safer town against floods, earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis and hurricanes within a budget. It is well known, but its maps are generic places rather than ones children know, and it was built for desktop browsers rather than the phones most families in flood-prone districts use.
• Flood forecasting services such as Google Flood Hub show where rivers may flood, for adults and officials.
• School safety programmes from NGOs provide booklets, drills and training, mostly without interactive simulation.

The gap is a short, mobile, local-language game in which children prepare a real place they recognise, using real terrain, and see what happens.

Inspiration

Stop Disasters! showed that a short simulation with a budget, a map and a disaster at the end can teach the basic ideas of disaster risk reduction to children. It was developed after the success of an earlier board game for younger children made with UNICEF. Your project follows the same structure (plan with limited resources, then watch the hazard test your plan) but grounds it in real elevation data and local languages, and measures what children learn.

What you build

• Students play a 15 to 20 minute session: explore the village, spend a limited budget on preparation, then watch the monsoon arrive and see which households were safe and why.
• Teachers use the guide to run a lesson around the game, with discussion questions after each level.
• NGOs (stretch goal) load their own district map for local training.

The technically interesting part

• From real data to a game map. Open elevation datasets and river lines need preprocessing: clipping to an area, resampling to a grid, marking roads, schools and houses. Build a repeatable pipeline in QGIS and Python so a new area takes an hour, not a week.
• A flood model children can understand. A real hydraulic model is too slow and too complex. Use a cellular automaton where water flows to lower neighbouring cells, with rainfall and river overflow as inputs. It must be believable, fast on a cheap phone and stable.
• Game balance. Players must face real trade-offs: not every household can be protected, early warnings cost time, and some choices only pay off in larger floods. Tune the budget and flood severity with playtests.
• Clear feedback. After the flood, show each outcome with a short reason, such as "this store was raised, so the seed grain survived". That is where the learning happens.
• Language and literacy. Use voice-over and icons so younger children and weaker readers can play.

How to evaluate it

• Learning: a short knowledge and decision test before and after play, with two or more classes, and ideally a comparison class that receives the usual lecture.
• Engagement: completion rate, replays and session length from local logs.
• Model plausibility: ask a civil engineering or geography teacher to compare flood spread in the game with real flood maps for the same area.
• Performance: frame rate and load time on a low-end Android phone.

Suggested plan

• Weeks 1 to 3: study Stop Disasters! and local school preparedness material, choose the first area, prepare the map pipeline.
• Weeks 4 to 7: grid map, flood model and the basic preparation phase.
• Weeks 8 to 10: level design, feedback screens, Urdu and Sindhi interface.
• Weeks 11 to 13: playtests with children, balancing and teacher guide.
• Weeks 14 to 15: classroom study, write-up and demo.

Path to a product

NGOs, disaster management authorities and education departments fund preparedness work every year, and many look for low-cost tools that work offline. A free game with paid customisation for new districts, or a grant-funded rollout, is realistic. The project is also a strong portfolio piece for game development and education technology roles.

Scope warning

Do not present the game as a flood forecast or safety advice for a specific village. Keep the flood model simple and explain its limits in the teacher guide. One well-built area and three levels are enough; resist adding more hazards until floods work well.

Learn what you need on Sefism

• Game development roadmap: game loops, levels and playtesting.
• Game development cheat sheet: quick reference while building in Godot or Unity.
• Godot Engine Documentation: tilemaps, scenes and Android export.
• Red Blob Games: grids, flow and map algorithms explained visually.
• Game Programming Patterns: structuring the simulation and update loop.

Get help with this idea

The risk is a beautiful game that teaches little, or a flood model that takes the whole year. Tauseef can help you scope the model, plan the classroom study and find a school or NGO partner. If you are new here, create a free account first.

• Discuss this idea with a mentor
• Send a query to Tauseef
• Book a 1:1 session