A Role-Playing Game for Social Learning about Cascading Failures due to Urban Flooding

Urban flooding threatens infrastructure systems and can force people to evacuate their homes. Flooding can cause failure in various critical infrastructure systems, including power, transportation, and communication systems, and such failure can cascade to other interconnected infrastructure systems. The outcomes of such flooding events are dependent on the ability for the organizations that manage critical infrastructure systems and emergency response to understand real-time and projected flood risk as well as collaborate effectively. This on-going research focuses on the design and development of a role-playing game (RPG) that educates participants on cascading failures throughout interconnected infrastructure systems in a simulated urban flooding scenario. The RPG will utilize the Urban Flooding Open Knowledge Network (UF-OKN), an informational interface in development focusing on extracting insight from geospatial data and hydrologic models, to assist participants with their decision-making. A detailed conceptual model of the RPG will be presented based on the following elements. Participants fill roles such a managers of various infrastructure systems, emergency planners, and homeowners, each with access to their own information, goals, and actions. Each round of the game will consist of planning and emergency phases; in the planning phase, participants determine their flood mitigating actions whereas in the emergency phase, participants react to a simulated flood event. While participants can only access their roles information in the first of the games two rounds, they can access a data-sharing and flood inundation interface (UF-OKN) as well as a network diagram showing infrastructure interconnections during the second round to inform decision-making about flood response and potential cascading infrastructure failures.