TY - JOUR
T1 - A Serious Video Game to Support Decision Making on Refugee Aid Deployment Policy
AU - Perez Estrada, Luis Eduardo
AU - Groen, Derek
AU - Ramirez-Marquez, Jose Emmanuel
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - The success of refugee support operations depends on the ability of humanitarian organizations and governments to deploy aid effectively. These operations require that decisions on resource allocation are made as quickly as possible in order to respond to urgent crises and, by anticipating future developments, remain adequate as the situation evolves. Agent-based modeling and simulation has been used to understand the progression of past refugee crises, as well as a way to predict how new ones will unfold. In this work, we tackle the problem of refugee aid deployment as a variant of the Robust Facility Location Problem (RFLP). We present a serious video game that functions as an interface for an agent-based simulation run with data from past refugee crises. Having obtained good approximate solutions to the RFLP by implementing a game that frames the problem as a puzzle, we adapted its mechanics and interface to correspond to refugee situations. The game is intended to be played by both subject matter experts and the general public, as a way to crowd-source effective courses of action in these situations.
AB - The success of refugee support operations depends on the ability of humanitarian organizations and governments to deploy aid effectively. These operations require that decisions on resource allocation are made as quickly as possible in order to respond to urgent crises and, by anticipating future developments, remain adequate as the situation evolves. Agent-based modeling and simulation has been used to understand the progression of past refugee crises, as well as a way to predict how new ones will unfold. In this work, we tackle the problem of refugee aid deployment as a variant of the Robust Facility Location Problem (RFLP). We present a serious video game that functions as an interface for an agent-based simulation run with data from past refugee crises. Having obtained good approximate solutions to the RFLP by implementing a game that frames the problem as a puzzle, we adapted its mechanics and interface to correspond to refugee situations. The game is intended to be played by both subject matter experts and the general public, as a way to crowd-source effective courses of action in these situations.
KW - Refugees
KW - modeling
KW - serious games
KW - simulation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85027355670&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85027355670&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.procs.2017.05.112
DO - 10.1016/j.procs.2017.05.112
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85027355670
SN - 1877-0509
VL - 108
SP - 205
EP - 214
JO - Procedia Computer Science
JF - Procedia Computer Science
T2 - International Conference on Computational Science ICCS 2017
Y2 - 12 June 2017 through 14 June 2017
ER -