You’re the city planner of a popular seaside resort town, but climate change is threatening your town’s existence. The sea level will rise two feet by 2050, leaving large areas of the town prone to flooding and threatening the town’s infrastructure and attractions. How are you going to address the problem before it’s too late?
That’s the scenario posed in “Game of Floods,” an interactive role-playing exercise that students in Julie Gabrielli’s Ecological Design Thinking seminar have participated in over the last two weeks. Designed to teach students about planning for climate disasters through the fictional town of Resilience Harbor, students engage in an immersive climate change assessment and adaptation plan to prepare the town for a rise in sea level.
To provide students with a deeper understanding of sustainability, participants take on different roles like deputy mayor, director of public works or homeowner association president, and then advocate for positions based on those roles. The game, originally developed by the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, is meant to simulate the competing interests that can be involved when making important public policy decisions like flood planning. The homeowner association president, for example, might lobby to protect the town’s upscale housing development, whereas the director of public works might push for a stronger protection of the wastewater management facility.
Following a vulnerability assessment of the fictional town’s assets—like the power plant, a hospital and a school—the students are presented with a limited budget, then asked to prioritize which assets they will protect and how they will go about protecting them.
The Game of Floods is an excellent immersive way to experience systems thinking in action,” Gabrielli said. “The students will draw from the many lessons and insights, no matter where their studies and careers take them. - Julie Gabrielli.
Read the article from Maryland Today here.