Final Project: Hello Waves

The Game

Hello Waves is a game that deals with a topic known as forecast-based financing, which aims to create new funding mechanisms for disaster preparedness.

Disaster risk reduction efforts traditionally focus on long-term preventative measures or post-disaster response. There are also many short-term actions, such as evacuation, that can be implemented to reduce the risk of impacts in the period of time between a warning and a potential disaster. However, this precious window of opportunity is regularly overlooked in the case of climate and weather forecasts, which can indicate heightened risk of disaster but are rarely used to initiate preventative action.

Forecast-based financing matches threshold forecast probabilities with appropriate actions, disburses required funding when threshold forecasts are issued, and develops standard operating procedures for when these threshold forecasts are issued.

In this game, you will play the role of someone trying to prevent ocean waves from destroying sandcastles, by using the tools of forecast-based financing.

— Matt Susskind, Team Hello Waves

Play the Game

Play Hello Waves online.

Technical note: You may be prompted to download the Unity Web Player, and this does not work with all browsers. For PC: we recommend Internet Explorer, Firefox, or Opera. For Mac: we recommend Safari. 

From Pitch to Product

The following video provides a closer look at the development of the Hello Waves game. Capturing each step in the team's iterative process, the video provides an in-depth view into how the team took their idea from pitch to product.

Student Insights

In this video, Matt Susskind describes various aspects of his experience as part of Team Hello Waves.