Description of problem statement 1660
Background: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all United Nations members in 2015, created 17 world Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It was also accepted that these SDGs are not possible to achieve without changing humanity’s relationship with the oceans. To realize that, in 2017, it was decided that the decade of 2021-30 is to be observed as UN Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (or UN Ocean Decade). INCOIS is identified as UN Ocean Decade Collaborative Centre for the Indian Ocean Region to help address all the ten UN Ocean Decade challenges (https://oceandecade.org/challenges/). Description: The creative solution proposed herein will address mainly (but not limited to) challenge-10. The gamified way of creating ocean related awareness is aimed for all age-groups and diverse education levels. Considering popularity of online gaming (multi-role playing to conventional games such as ludo) and affordable devices along with data plans, this approach is promising option for ocean literacy. For a starter, one such solution (but very limited/basic in nature) can be found at: https://www.outreachgames.org/OceanProtector/main.html. Expected Solution: The user will be able to chose from a variety of sea-going roles e.g. but not limited to, fishermen, captain of a ship, tourism operator etc. Based on the role, one needs to choose the correct sea conditions to be at a location (or move away) with the help of available/applicable ocean information services form INCOIS (simulated for the game). Correct decision (e.g. going for fishing to PFZ zone or moving away from the shore when tsunami is detected) will add to the points and help player achieve next level. Wrong decision may result in loosing points and add other gaming penalties (e.g. start over or wait till certain time etc etc). Users goal would be to advance and maintain gains at the daily, weekly etc leaderboards so in that way it would be competitive among the users even though their game decisions are not affecting to the others directly. The solution should be suitable for windows and android environments (web and browser based) and scalable over the time by the host institute independently post-SIH