Riskville

City planning can be a real challenge when it comes to all different interests and priorities that needs to be taken into account. In the game Riskville participants are presented with scenarios that demonstrate how city planning and building is closely connected to vulnerabilities to societal risks. Participants are put in charge of development processes in the city of Riskville where they have to plan, build and take into account the wishes of the Riskville inhabitants.

About Riskville

Riskville was created with experiences from using the Floodville model in mind as part of a university project called The childrens university in 2013. In Riskville participants are put in charge of planning and building an attractive, sustainable and safe city and then evaluate and discuss consequences from the occurence of a societal risk event. The game is suited as a tool for discussion and learning in school education, with groups from the public or societal actors.

One important aim with Riskville is that the game should be really simple and cheap to adapt to ones own context. In our version of Riskville the game plan is made from a green needle-felt carpet with blue pieces of fabric representing water, rivers and lakes. The city is made up from wooden blocks representing societal functions like residences, workplaces, shops, schools, healthcare, water treatment and rescue services. Infrastructure and hardened surfaces like roads and parking lots are build using cardboard. Instructions and game cards from our version of Riskville can be downloaded and used freely from the links o the right.

One gameturn

In a typical gameturn one of the participants is appointed as game leader with the task of guiding the other participants in the game using a pre-made script printed on game cards. The participants are divided into smaller working groups and are handled tasks by the game leader during the course of the game. The working groups discuss and agree on actions, implement these actions on the game plan and present and motivate their choices to the other working groups.

Tasks consist of different kinds of simple challenges that aim to get the participants to reason about an attractive, safe and sustainable city, what it is and how it can be built. After a number of tasks have been implemented the resulting city will be put to the test by a large event with negative consequences for the city. The participants, now in full group, will decide on the effects of the event and consequences for the city. The last part of the game is a discussion on to what degree consequences are connected to the development of Riskville made during the game and if and how such consequences can be reduced or prevented in the future.

Riskville in research

The Centre for Societal Risk Research's RiskLab and our pedagogic models Floodville and Riskville are in many ways results of the research at CSR. The models also have had an impact on our research, through inspiration, through the playful handling of oftentimes complex scientific questions, and not in the least through all new intriguing questions raised.

The article: Riskville - A Game for Learning about Disaster Risks and Urban Planning, published in International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters last fall is one result of a collaborative effort with several of us here at CSR that have been working with the production, development and use of our pedagogic models. Our hope is that the article contributes to spread and develop ideas behind a playful, interactive and very hands-on environment for learning about difficult and sometimes abstract societal challenges as well as adding to this very relevant field of research.

• Christenson, N, Koivisto, J., Persson, E., Hindersson, E., Gustafsson, K. and Pettersson, A. (2018) Riskville - A Game for Learning about Disaster Risks and Urban Planning. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters. November 18, Vol 36, No 3. pp. 238-246. Link to the article (Requires access to the IJMED journal)
• Open link to the article [.pdf, 1,7Mb]