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