Second Life Raises Awareness With Disaster Zone Project

Pixels and Policy has an interesting article on how the Catastrophic Planning and Management Institute in cooperation with Linden Labs recently launched a new Second Life sim, an innovative disaster awareness project called the “The Disaster Zone’ that will assist in planning and preparing for real disasters with virtual worlds. The project includes 14 collaborative islands and one overarching goal: limiting deaths related to natural disasters.

Cp-mi CPMI plans to create an in world disaster recreation and training program designed to educate users on the best way to avoid falling victim to hurricanes, earthquakes, and other common disasters.

The Citizens’ Emergency Preparedness Project makes use of cutting-edge technology and streaming media to drive home its message.

CPMI offers the opportunity to learn through streaming media and community interaction. Second Life is already a mix of community center and media hall, so it seems natural to build a facility to teach the importance of working together to help prepare for and mitigate disasters.

Bringing in the Virtual Feds

CPMI has been closely involved in the evaluation and development of Catastrophic Plans for multiple Federal agencies and the Department of Defense. The organization is now flexing its virtual chops, bringing its work in catastrophic planning to civilian groups.

Other CP-MI Federal projects include review of IT Security, Interoperable Communications for Disaster Response, Health IT Security and Medical Record security and assistance in reconciliation middleware; Internal Review Processes and software development; review of Emergency Alert Systems, evaluation of Exercise Hot-Wash procedures and After Action Reports.

Full Article – Pixels and Policy.

Visit The Second Life Site

Catastrophic Planning and Management Institute