WildFires Project

Introduction

This project aims to develop innovative socio-technical digital twins using complex systems approaches and serious games to enhance risk management and community engagement in areas prone to recurring natural hazards like wildfires. By employing a complex systems approach to hazard reduction across multiple scales of risk, the project will create a new generation of socio-technical digital twins that integrate models of physical infrastructure systems, virtual networks of communication, and social games to enhance community engagement. Specifically, it will:

Develop a socio-technical digital twin of the San Francisco Bay Area that integrates virtual models of physical infrastructure systems, social/commercial networks, and insurance mechanisms.
Design and develop serious games to activate learning processes and engage the community's awareness and commitment to collective action.
Investigate whether community learning processes focusing on cognition and action will mitigate wildfire risk in the short term and lead to sustainable adaptation to recurring risk conditions in the long term.
Engage under-represented minorities in affected regions and support decision-makers in vulnerable communities.

The project is expected to make significant contributions to the field of risk management by:

Developing new methods for managing risk in hazard-exposed communities.
Advancing risk management theory through a prototype socio-technical framework for decision-making support.
Providing both regional and micro-scale views of risk interactions.
Translating risk information into easily understandable formats and embedding learning processes in gaming scenarios to promote risk reduction.

Publications

Johns, M. J., et al. "Participatory Design of a Serious Game to Improve Wildfire Preparedness with Community Residents and Experts." Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2024. (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3613905.3650735)
Info Overload: A Cooperative Evacuation Game. FDG - Foundations of Digital Games - 2024. Game Demos Track. (https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.09559)

Games

Find Your Things

Alert The City

Info Overload

Happy House

Link to play the games on browser: https://ucsc-wildfire-games.itch.io/

Video

Wildfire Games Research Pitch

Team

Prof. Kenichi Soga, Donald H. McLaughlin Chair in Mineral Engineering and Chancellor’s Professor, U.C. Berkeley

Prof. Louise Comfort, Affiliated Faculty, The Policy Lab, Center for Information

Prof. Magy Seif El-Nasr, Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) at U.C. Berkeley

Prof. Stephen Collier, Department of City and Regional Planning, U.C. Berkeley

Prof. Keith Gilless, Department of Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, U.C. Berkeley

Prof. Michael Gollner, Mechanical Engineering, U.C. Berkeley

Prof. Thomas Maiorana, Department of Design, U.C. Davis

Prof. Katherine Isbister, Department of Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

Prof. Edward Melcer, Department of Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

Dr. Seunghyun Lee, Postdoctoral Researcher, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, U.C. Berkeley

Dr. Maryam Zamanialaei, Postdoctoral Researcher, Fire Research Lab, Mechanical Engineering, U.C. Berkeley

Dr. Dwi Marhaendro Jati Purnomo, Postdoctoral Researcher, Fire Research Lab, Mechanical Engineering, U.C. Berkeley

Dr. Mario Escarce Junior, Postdoctoral Researcher, GUII Lab, U.C. Santa Cruz

Pengshun Li, Ph.D. Candidate, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, U.C. Berkeley

Yanglan Wang, Ph.D. Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, U.C. Berkeley

Paola Lorusso, Ph.D. Student, Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, U.C. Berkeley

Yael Nidam, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of City and Regional Planning, U.C. Berkeley

Maria Theodori, Ph.D. Candidate, Fire Research Lab, Mechanical Engineering, U.C. Berkeley

Dr. Mennatullah Hendaway, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

MJ Johns, Ph.D. Student, Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

Jonattan Holmes, Student, Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

Emmanuel Ezenwa Jr., Master's Student, Human-Computer Interaction, U.C. Santa Cruz

Yiyang Lu, Master's Student, Computational Media, U.C. Santa Cruz

Alumni

Harrison Raine, Master's Student of Landscape Architecture and City Planning, U.C. Berkeley

Mary McGee, Master's Student of City Planning (MCP) and Public Health (MPH), U.C. Berkeley

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