Saturday, November 10, 2007

Video Game helps Flood Planners in UK

After reading this article on BBC News, I learned about the UK's preparations for global warming flooding. Their main tool for research is a video game called FloodRanger.

It allows you play a 100 year period in a fictional setting, and act out different scenarios with flooding. According to the United Kingdom's chief scientific advisor the number of people at risk of flooding in Britain will increase to 3.5 million by the year 2080.

While that might seem far in the future, the time for action is now. Preserving valuable coast line, as well as devising other long-term solutions takes time.

The game will help researchers learn where to effectively build dams, and reservoirs to limit any flood waters. Also it will save millions of pounds to test these flood scenarios in a video game rather than testing the real thing. You have to be careful though, because you will lose in the game if the public opinion of your leaderships dips below 30%.

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