Gamified Disaster Education. A Systematic Review of Serious Games on Dealing with Natural Hazards and of their Impacts and Outcomes for Users

Abstract. Natural hazards pose a threat to human life and health. As a tool of risk communication and disaster education serious games are being used with increasing frequency. Even though an increase in research in the field is observable, little is known about serious games’ actual effectiveness. This systematic review gives an overview of existing publications on serious games dealing with natural hazards and evaluations of reported effects on users. We analyse 132 scientific articles and conference papers published between 2007 and 2025. Most publications describe digital serious games; analogue or hybrid formats were rarely explored. Flooding is the hazard addressed most frequently. 17 publications introduce and describe the serious games, while about half of the publications (n=73) report a usability evaluation of the games. This review focuses on the 42 publications that also include an evaluation of the serious games’ impact on the player. Most of these effectiveness evaluation studies do not apply any theoretical frameworks for the game development and/or evaluation processes. A noticeable concentration of findings concerns positive impacts on knowledge and self-efficacy. Behaviour, motivation, intention, further psychological impacts as well as specific competencies are explored in comparably few publications. Our findings show that theoretical frameworks play a subordinate role in the current research landscape examined. The quality of applied evaluation methods varied considerably. Most commonly reported impacts and outcomes for players were increased knowledge and self-efficacy.