_Rebuilding Haiti

On 12 January, 2010 the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was struck by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake. The Caribbean’s largest city was caught completely off-guard and unprepared. This partly explains why the catastrophe was one of such a huge scale, and why rebuilding the city continues to be a baffling problem. But the majority of the logistical issues are just the tip of the iceberg. In a capital city where everything, even the government centre, is to be rebuilt, where do you start? That’s the frightening problem officials and NGOs have faced since the day following the quake, and a problem that the public should contemplate.

In this web-based interactive reportage, the user will have to face all the great dilemmas of the recovery process and make decisions to levy international fund pledges, prioritize tasks, organize reconstruction works and fight government inaction. According to the choices the player makes and the consequences he induces, the software will generate a journalistic report of the process in the making. The interactive reportage will thus take the form of a “Chose your own Adventure” news report, partly based on what actually happened in Haiti since 2010, and partly on “what ifs”.