Would you do it better with rain alerts on mobile phones? ES-Alert Simulator invites you to try it

When mobile phones ring with the strident tone of ES-Alert alarms it is impossible not to hear them, and in these last few days we have heard them often. But when they ring often there is also criticism from citizens who believe they arrive late or, conversely, that they are sent in places where they would not be needed. Now an online game devised by programmer and meteorology enthusiast Xavier Garcia invites you to try it yourself, if you think you would do it better. It is called ES-Alert Simulator and, when you play it, you will put yourself in the shoes of a Civil Protection duty officer in Catalonia during a rain episode.

At first it seems easy, deciding when an alarm should be sent to hundreds of thousands or millions of mobile phones, but it is not so much and can become a real dilemma for those in charge. To put the player in the situation, ES-Alert Simulator offers some clues such as the rain warnings from Aemet and Meteocat, from mild warnings to major alerts for violent weather. However, just as happens in real life, the messages from Aemet and Meteocat do not always coincide and, some, can also be false alarms.

Furthermore, the game also does not reveal what type of rain episode you will get in each game: it can be anything from a nocturnal storm on the coast that does not cause great havoc to a DANA that puts a large part of the Catalan population in danger. But the decision of whether or not to send the alert is in the hands of each player and, just as happens in real life, making a mistake has consequences.

For example, if in the face of a violent storm the alert is not sent or is sent too late, people will continue to be on the street, in the car, or in basements when the rain arrives and will be more exposed to the dangers that a downpour or torrential rain entails. But if the population is warned and it does not rain, the player will not only be exposed to criticism from the population, but the public service will lose credibility. The decisions made throughout the game will dictate the outcome of each player, who, in the worst-case scenario, will end up being responsible for numerous victims and high economic costs and will be forced to resign as head of the Civil Protection corps.

"It's just a game"

Behind the creation of the game is Xavier Garcia, an online store developer and weather enthusiast. As he explains to ARA, the programmer devised the simulation following the latest storm that has shaken Catalonia. "With so much fuss about the storms, every time I went on Twitter(X) I saw that everyone was complaining about the alerts -explains Garcia-. If an alert was sent early in the morning, people said the warning had woken them up; if it was sent late, someone else insisted that the alert had woken up their baby", the creator ironizes.

With these messages filling social media, Garcia began to reflect on the subject. "What if we were the ones sending the alerts, what would happen?", he asked himself. Thus, with the help of his knowledge of meteorology and programming, together with artificial intelligence, he developed what he considers a fun pastime. "It's just a game", emphasizes the creator, who assures that this simulation does not intend to belittle the alerts or fall into political discourse. "It's entertainment: obviously it's difficult to send the alerts, and if you are in a town where one has been sent and it doesn't rain, you have every right to complain. But the game is not aligned with either one side or the other", he concludes.