What is Disaster Dynamics?

The goal of the Disaster Dynamics project is to create an effective learning environment for the unique challenges surrounding natural disasters. The difference between an extreme weather event and a natural disaster is related to a community's ability to plan for and cope with the event. The design of hazard resistant and resilient communities is an essential part of this activity. By focusing on dynamics, this project emphasizes the complex and emergent interplay between different aspects of the design activities and the extreme event.

In order to engage people in the exciting challenges of disaster dynamics, we are creating a family of educational role-playing simulation games. Complementing existing games which typically simulate disaster response, our games instead focus on simulating the design and recovery aspects of emergency management. The following are some of the core themes addressed by our games:

• Decision Making Under Uncertainty - Planning for extreme events is a process of designing for hypothetical futures. Even when information is available, it is never sufficient to perfectly predict future events. Planning requires not only an understanding of the nature of this uncertainty, but how that uncertainty affects the actions of participants within the system.
• Complex Systems and Emergent Properties - The reaction to disasters is based on many factors including the dynamic properties of the extreme event. Feedback loops, such as the link between infrastructure development, destruction in an extreme event, and subsequent redevelopment are an important part of this complexity. By focusing on emergent properties, our games demonstrate how simple rules (and design decisions) can lead to complex patterns and outcomes.
• Understanding Design Decisions - Mitigation against natural disasters is a continuous process of planning and learning from experience. Frequently, community planning decisions and disaster mitigation are separate activities. Our games attempt to understand the challenges in urban design and the emergent properties of this design that may be relevant to hazard management.
• Fostering Collaborations - Many stakeholders must work together in order to successfully address design challenges. Emergency managers, politicians, insurers, business owners, land developers, and citizens are just some of the many roles that are important in design tasks. We emphasize the creation of a collaborative environment where people can understand each other's concerns and can build a shared understanding of a problem.

The Disaster Dynamics Prototypes

Our goal is to develop a suite of games. Our first games will be targeted at undergraduate emergency management education. We hope that some of the games can be adapted to other undergraduate disciplines and possibly to K-12 education.

• Flow is a simple board game that demonstrates movement through a city during an extreme event.
• Freeway is not a disaster dynamics game per se but a negotiation and consensus building game.

For More Information

We are using a Swiki to document progress on our project. The Swiki is constantly changing as we create and refine our ideas. If you are interested in the current state of the project, please visit the Swiki at <http://swiki.esig.ucar.edu/dd/>.