Use of technology and games to build climatic resilient communities

What can an individual person do to adapt and recover from climate -related events?

This question can be intimidating for the daily person. It turns out that it can even be difficult for climatic experts to weigh.

“When I asked local experts this question, most have had trouble answering Coastal climate resilience center.

Hirsch is one of the authors of a new study on how technology can help people prepare more for climate risks – an invented “climate resilience” measure. Hirsch also managed a team of undergraduate students from the UC Santa Cruz in the building A new exhibition at Seymour Marine Discovery Center This seeks to provide members of the community with climate change preparing techniques thanks to a engaging and engaging game for visitors.

As our lives are increasingly subject to natural risks, the construction of ways to terminate in the face of climate -induced events is more and more important. This is true at the individual and community level. The recent Hirsch study examines how technology can support and allow people to terminate the climate, while the game it has built gives people tangible means to implement climatic resilient practices in daily life.

Basically, Hirsch seeks to identify the ways that people and communities can prevent, manage and recover disturbances and impacts related to climate.

How can technology support climate resilience?

The Hirsch study, which should be published in the coming months, includes interviews of 16 experts working in climate resilience, in particular those in partnership with local communities. These interviews help inform what the elements contribute to climate resilience, says Hirsch. The study is then based on these fundamental elements by examining how technology could fill the gaps and identified needs, or facilitate preparation to create people and districts resilient in the climate.

Until now, the study affirms that research on climate resilience has adopted a descending approach, working from the point of view of policy and using scientific applications to understand the global frameworks which can make a city more resilient in the face of natural risks. But Hirsch’s study is based on the individual and community level, seeking to identify daily actions that strengthen preparation for natural risks. It also examines not only how technology can be used to support these actions, but narrows ambiguity around the role of technology in supporting this process.

Technology plays a role deeply integrated into the many processes that contribute to climate resilience – of communication and collaboration in reflection, learning and support. One of the most important things that technology can do, revealed that the study is to expand access to information, which has appeared as a key theme to create the resilience of expert interviews. He was also one of the take -out dishes for Hirsch.

“One of these crucial parties (on the creation of climate resilience) concerns information. How do you access information, how you distribute the information, how you understand it and also how you apply it, ”explains Hirsch.

Accessible information is closely linked to solid community connections, depending on the study. To fill in knowledge gaps, communities need robust networks, both inside and beyond their immediate neighborhoods, connecting with other communities, institutions and businesses. Technology plays a key role in this effort, offering several ways to share information, from social media to messaging platforms. These tools are essential constituent elements of community resilience. When people are connected, the availability of resources and the impact of a person’s actions are more visible.

“If you have a more connected neighborhood community internally, it will make it more resilient,” explains Hirsch.

People are also inspired by each other, said an expert interview. If your neighbor is bicycle to work, you might be able to consider an alternative and lasting mode of transport.

When using technology to facilitate these spaces, climate experts called for digital tools that support not only learning and connection, but are also pleasant to use. They highlighted the potential of playful approaches, such as games, to encourage participation in the community scale, including among groups that are often overlooked, such as the elderly, low -income residents and non -native speakers.

For Hirsch, the study also informed the need for interdisciplinary collaboration. She is looking forward to presenting her conclusions in a Upcoming conference Dedicated to exploring how design can support a more sustainable world, and she hopes that this will be an opportunity to fill the research sectors.

As for the rest, Hirsch hopes to dive into the prospects of the way in which individuals can build the climate resilience of the source – communities and people. She has already started part of this work, through a series of workshops she organized earlier this year who asked the members of the community how they were preparing for flood risks, developing preparation methods and considering what would help community members be more committed to taking measures towards climate resilience.

One of the comments she heard?

“People wanted to learn to be (resilient in the climate) a fun experience,” explains Hirsch.

Make climate resilience

Inside Seymour marine discovery center In Santa Cruz, children and parents are walking in various exhibitions, pointing to starfish sucked in glass tanks and stopping to read the plates. A family takes up the cards of the interactive game of resilience of the floods of Linda Hirsch.

On each card is an activity that the player can do well before, just before, during and after a flood. Projected in the middle of the game is a map of the districts flanking the San Lorenzo river. A smiling kerfare signals the player in the corner of the projection and the yellow stars follow the player’s progress in the game.

The object of the game is that the players increase the resilience of the floods of their community by working together and thinking in advance.

“Games are part of my wider research scholarship to explore technological interventions to increase the climate resilience of local communities from bottom to top,” explains Hirsch. “There is a need for fun and engaging interventions as well as the need for residents to connect more with their environment and local neighborhoods. The game does it thanks to links with local resources and actions. ”

Would erase your gutters with leaves being something that you should do well before a flood, just before, during or after, a invited card. A QR code below of the activity invites the player to find out more about this activity. If the action you choose has the most sense given the prompt, you earn points.

These details are intuitive and help lighten the serious subject of flood events. They are not accidental – each element has been designed by thinking of the user, as well as at the age of the player, and is a conclusion of the collaboration between the Hirsch team and the center of Seymour.

“We have had several development cycles engaging in our contact with the center of Seymour and the local communities of Santa Cruz,” explains Hirsch. “The game includes several components of which each had to be carefully designed, tested and developed before connecting it with the other game components. Even wood players stations are one of the simplest components, and yet it still takes several iterations to design them, by cutting them in the right way, so that everything adapts and is understandable.”

But it is these details reflected that Hirsch hopes that the game will be accessible at all ages and will have a lasting impact on the players.

“Games are not the answer to everything, but it allows more positive emotions and experiences with a serious subject,” explains Hirsch. “They also facilitate intergenerational game, where players can discuss and decide together, benefiting from the knowledge that each players must contribute.”

Hirsch and his team plan to follow the number of players from which the stations play a game, how many games are finished and how long it takes players to finish a game. They will also carry out surveys to see if the players followed the guest action of the card.

So far, says Hirsch, people have loved the game, in particular the way it emphasizes local contacts and sources of information. Already, a person who completed the follow-up investigation mentioned that he had packed an emergency kit for himself and his dog after playing the game, according to Hirsch.

“The games are very important. Not everywhere for everyone. But if we think in the long term and reflect on the empowerment of non-experts and their different educational horizons, games can be a very good way to keep the threshold to engage with the subject, “says Hirsch. “If people have fun doing it and even doing it with others they like, they are more likely to play and get involved with the subject. And these significant experiences also trigger more reflection than simply reading a passive text on this subject.”

Ahead

Hirsch’s study helps to light up the way technology is anchored in the process of creating a climate resilient community. He also identified the specific ways of means of using technology to build resilient communities, to use it to disseminate information, to the creation of committing means for the community to examine their own preparation for relationships for climate risks.

It can also do something else and perhaps more surprising – it can help us connect with our own humanity, through collaboration and social interactions within our communities.