Thought Leadership
How to “level up” your Dam Safety Practices with Serious Games
April 4, 2024
Rebecca Verity – Senior Climate Adaptation Scientist
Dam management is serious business, and dam managers have a lot on their minds, whether they are managing for flood control, water storage, hydropower, recreation, or some combination – especially as changing weather tests design parameters and introduces unexpected challenges.
In this blog, readers will discover the unique ability of games to provide quick, effective education around new dam threats and innovative solutions, and to spark breakthrough conversations amongst diverse stakeholders, building relationships and reducing barriers to collaboration.
I recently shared a (literal!) elevator ride with a water agency client and asked what was keeping him up at night. He had just come through California’s most intense drought in 1,000 years, ended by 2023’s punishing atmospheric rivers. But his answer wasn’t directly about drought or flood: his reservoir’s water quality was his biggest concern. While his shorelines hadn’t burned, California’s new megafires had burned huge regions, hundreds of miles upstream. Those atmospheric rivers had washed acres of ash downstream, polluting his reservoir. Months later it had not yet settled; a big problem, because his reservoir supplies drinking water.
What can dam managers do when their biggest concerns are around impacts they can’t control? More importantly, what can they do if they can’t afford the engineering solutions? When the weather is changing but the timing or implications of those changes are hazy, how can water agencies explain the increasing costs of dam safety to their customers and communities? How do we find our way in a changing world, through a maze of conflicting priorities, to safer communities with sustainable, clean water?
How about playing a board game? In partnership with Yuba Water Agency, and with input from the US Army Corps of Engineers, Rebecca Verity, Vance Howard, Mark Fortner, Kwabena Asante, and Val Yap of GEI have developed That Dam Game!, which pits dam owners and operators against big weather in a game of risk, reward, and resilience.
While a board game may not be the obvious next step, maybe it should be. Here’s why.
Prioritizing how to spend limited resources on communal issues – like flood safety, and beneficial uses of water – is always challenging. It’s even more difficult when more than one stakeholder is at the table. Conversations around flood risk and water supply can push our emotional buttons. In a room with competing interests, discussions can get tense.
We may hold different priorities or opposing perspectives. We may be protective of our rights, our turf, or our obligations. We may also simply feel uneducated on some issues, while feeling others don’t understand our simple, obvious viewpoint. Adrenaline spikes, and cortisol rises. Our brains and bodies are poised for action and opposition, not for listening, learning, or collaboration. It’s not a great way to compromise or make communal decisions.
Can a well-designed game really help? Yes, it can. Because a game is not real, defenses start out low, which keeps those stress hormones low. Games which require collaboration force players to become invested in helping each other win. That is key. No matter who is at your table, if you are actively helping each other win, you are also opening the door to mutual liking and trust. Those feelings can last long after the game is back on the shelf.
A well-built game will make you laugh and bring you triumph. Laughter and triumph do fantastic things to your stress hormones: cortisol is decreased, while dopamine, endorphins, and oxytocin (the happy hormones) flood your system. A fun game about serious topics can temporarily change the way our bodies physiologically respond to those topics. When stress is low and happiness is high, players with diverse backgrounds or expertise are more open to developing a shared understanding, to starting dialogue, and to considering new perspectives in pursuit of a shared win.
Games call on our creative skills, put us into a solution mindset, help us learn, and help us strategize. For all these reasons, they can be fantastic for breaking down barriers and helping us identify new ways to tackle tricky problems together. These are features we all need, more than ever, to solve the serious threats that changing weather poses to our dams and water sources.
That Dam Game! asks: can you keep your dam from overtopping, your gates operational, and your reservoir full, no matter what the weather brings? As you build partnerships, implement multi-benefit solutions and ecological improvements, or add new management approaches, you will learn strategies to increase public safety, improve operational flexibility, protect your water supply, and implement new revenue streams.
Who should play That Dam Game? Anyone, really, who considers water an important part of life. If you’ll be at the USSD Conference in April, you should come play with us there. We’ll be discussing climate risks and resilience via game play on Thursday, April 24.
That Dam Game! can also be used during:
- Staff exercises, both for management prioritization and for education about innovative strategies for resilience.
- Stakeholder outreach or educational events, to explain the complexities of dam management to communities or students
- Partnership and collaboration meetings, to build relationships and open difficult conversations in a comfortable setting.
Interested in learning more? Please reach out to Rebecca Verity or Vance Howard to discuss bringing That Dam Game! to your organization.