I-CISK Serious Game at Understanding Risk Global Forum
The bi-annual Understanding Risk Global Forum was held in Himeji, Japan, in the week of 16-21 June, 2024. This forum brought together over 1700 attendees working in disaster risk management, with experts from over 135 countries, 700+ organizations representing Government Agencies, Multilateral Organizations, the Private Sector, NGOs, Research Institutions, Academia and Civil Society from across the World.
The I-CISK project hosted a special session during the forum on the integration of local knowledge and scientific knowledge in climate services. The special session,”Mobilising local knowledge in climate service’s last mile – dimensions, roles and challenges” was organised on afternoon of the 21st of June. With a small group of attendees, a presentation was first held by I-CISK PhD candidate Sumiran Rastogi on insights that have been developed within the project on local knowledge, its dimensions and how decision timelines can used as an effective tool to explore how users make decisions and the local and scientific knowledges that are used to inform decision-making. This was followed by a rich discussion among the attendees.
The highlight of the session was the first public playing of the serious game developed in the project, called To Farm or Not to Farm, in which participants took on the role of farmers and in four rounds made decisions on what and when to plant, choosing between grapes, maize and wheat, informed by specially prepared climate services as well as local knowledge cards.
It was interesting to find in the debrief how actively players actually used the local knowledge cards to triangulate with the scientific data provided in the climate service bulletins.
As one attendee responded: “Thanks very much for the Friday afternoon event you ran. There was lots of good stuff in there and I very much liked the game you’d devised – very well thought through, clearly testing the local knowledge vs. ‘high tech’ services balance.”
Players carefully studying local knowledge cards and climate information bulletins during the serious game.