Flooding game shows UK cities drowning

Flooding throughout the country over the last few years has probably given many people pause for thought as to what may happen if a serious, or even catastrophic flood, were to take place in our home town or city.

What would it mean to daily life, what would the landscape look like, would we be able to drive or go to work?

These are all things that we can not imagine unless we have lived in an area that has been flooded, and although some major city areas have been affected, no city in the UK has yet had to face a catastrophic flood such as the one that hit New Orleans.

A new game, backed by Environment Minister Phil Woolas, aims to show us the reality of large scale flooding.

The Floodsim.com game makes the player responsible for decisions that affect the lives of millions by allowing them to make all the big discussions on how to protect individual cities in case of flooding.

The player will have to decide where the sand bags will be deployed and where to build flood barriers.

They will have to make decisions on which houses will have to be sacrificed to make way for barriers and they will have to do everything within a set budget and timeframe.

The game also has the backing of insurance companies, who are anxious to heighten awareness of the dangers after they made huge losses because of the 2007 floods.

The interesting part of the game is to be found once the defenses are in place and your plans are all in order.

Then the rains arrive and as the game progresses the scale of the flooding starts to become apparent on computer generated aerial images of our big cities, as roads and landmarks begin to be engulfed.

Your discussions will count as you try to control the devastation, but as the images show, it may not always be possible to hold back the impending disaster.

An overhead view of London, Manchester or Glasgow, as well as other cities, will show its landmarks slowly drowning unless you have made the right choices.

The aim of the game is to educate and inform the public about the dangers of complacency in the face of the growing flood threat.