BOKU and IIASA

BOKU

BOKU = Universität für Bodenkultur Wien = University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna

On September 19th, we made a trip to BOKU for a series of lectures presented by one of our international collaborators, Dr. Jan Sendzimir. We were joined by a couple students from Burkina Faso and another professor from the university. Jan gave us three presentations: 1) Adapting to Global Change: Integrating Science and Policy in River Basins, 2) Participatory Processes to View Consequences of Assumptions about Social-Ecological Systems, and 3) Ignoring Climate Science: Some 'soft' explanations.

Photo credit: Maggi Sliwinski

Photo credit: Maggi Sliwinski

Photo credit: Maggi Sliwinski

IIASA

IIASA = International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Vienna

This morning, September 26th, we traveled a short way outside Vienna to Laxenburg for a meeting with another international collaborator, Dr. Piotr Magnuszewski. We discussed our plans for Poland, where we will get a chance to observe other people playing the role playing game as part of an exploratory study. We will be sure to provide more details following our experiences in Poland next month. 

On the bus to Laxenburg

Outside IIASA

Piotr

Maggi's take on the Game

As you know, the IGERT group spent Tuesday morning playing a game, titled "Lords of the Valley". Although this may sound like some fantasy-laden video game, it is in fact related to our training as IGERT students. Lords of the Valley is also known as "Floodplain Management Game". If you know that our IGERT is titled "Resilience and Adaptive Governance in Stressed Watersheds", then you can see the connection.

This game is based on work conducted in the Tisza River Valley, in Hungary. The Tisza River Valley is an area with agricultural development in a flood-prone area. There is a local town government that sets land prices and tax rates, a water control board, which is in charge of maintaining either dikes or irrigation structures, as well as a bank and non-governmental organizations. In real life, there are likely many more stakeholders, but for the purposes of the game, this is plenty. These stakeholders are thrown into a situation where yearly rainfall is unpredictable, and they must act out a series of years, making decisions about what to grow on the land, how much land should cost, whether they should work with an NGO, or if they should take out a loan to fund any of these activities. Essentially, this game represents a complex system in which all actors are linked together in sometimes unclear ways, exactly how real life is.

My partner and I trying to decide the best course of action.

 There are a number of reasons for playing this game. One is to use it as an educational tool. Real people that live in any complex system (most humans live in a complex system without ever realizing it) can play the game to learn how to discover linkages that are present in their own lives. This can lead to better decisions for the whole community. The game is also a tool to be used to learning how to effectively communicate, since all players lack complete information--we know a lot about our own situations, but very little about the specifics of any other situations.

Another way this game may be used is to educate real stakeholders about other stakeholders' views. For example, you could take this game to the Tisza River Valley and ask stakeholders to play. The trick would be that you would switch their roles: the farmer would take on the role of banker, the local government would take on the role of non-government organization, etc. The hope is that the different stakeholders may start to develop and understanding of and empathy towards other stakeholders with which they may have been at odds. You can also develop games specific to other areas and/or problems to be used in a similar manner.

The first "community meeting".

 Using the game as an aquarium is also possible. This has been done once, in which students were asked to play the roles in the game, while the real-life stakeholders sat silent in the room to watch the interactions and outcomes. This is particularly useful when there is a lot of animosity among the stakeholders. Watching others play the game may also encourage the development of empathy towards other stakeholders and help to facilitate discussions that were not possible prior to the game.

Studying the board.

Finally, the game may also be used to study social processes in complex systems. Understanding how people behave in complex systems is an interesting, if difficult, problem to study. Using a role playing game such as "Lords of the Valley" may be useful, but how much this may apply to real-life situations, when it's students acting out roles, is a little unclear to me. For instance, if I was really a farmer, instead of trying to fulfill the role of a farmer in the game, the outcomes may have been different. But these are difficult questions to answer, and a role playing game is one way to start answering them.

(Post written by Maggi Sliwinski)

(Photos by Victoria)

One week in

We made it through our first workshop. Yesterday we learned how to observe the stakeholder simulations to collect data. This is essentially what we will be doing while we are in Poland next month. I think we learned so much this week - it has already been an invaluable experience. Here are a few pictures from yesterday's exercises. In the following few pictures, Vicky is a shopkeeper and Marie and Ilonka are customers. They are each looking to buy the same goods for different reasons, but neither of them have enough money to buy them on their own. This exercise was similar to material we covered in our Conflict Resolution short course, and we now also have the tools to take meaningful notes while observing the interaction taking place.

Pet stores and pink frisbees

This exercise was structured more like the "community meetings" we have participated in as part of the stakeholder simulation. In this situation, Anil is an upset landowner, Maggi is a dairy farmer, Shelli is a city-slicker visiting her grandparents' farm, and Noelle is the town mayor. They each have their own problems and goals they'd like to achieve, and each has specific information about their role, causing them to bring different motivations to the exercise, unbeknownst to the other players.

Here you see Joanna, our workshop leader, stepping in to help us walk through what we just witnessed. After observing the interactions, we discussed what we saw as a group, and noted moments of conflict, cooperation, and leadership.

In these pictures, you can also see the workspace at Plenum we have while we are working in Vienna. It's a nice meeting space, away from the hostel, where we can ideally be productive and work as a group. 

This morning we met with Craig to go over possible manuscript ideas and discuss what we learned this week. He is leaving tomorrow morning, and we won't see him again until our trip to Montpellier, France next month. We have plenty to read and prepare for before we take any of our group trips, so even though the workshop is over, we're really just getting started! 

Playing games in Vienna

Today was our first full day of "work." A group of faculty members from IIASA joined us for our first day of the stakeholder simulation workshop. The group was split up into stakeholder categories and given background information on each role. Groups included a local government, an environmental NGO, farmers, bankers, and a water council, and we each had limited funds to start the game (100 euros). Farmers had to buy land and try to make a profit, the local government had to sell land and allocate money to the water council, who was in charge of controlling the river's water flow. The NGO's goal was to work with other stakeholders and promote sustainable land use (as determined by the descriptions we were given to start the game).

The exercise was an excellent example of how important information sharing is when trying to reach a common goal. We learned the importance of transparency, trust, and open communication, as well as how difficult it is to balance policy and science. Part of the difficulty in these simulations is the speed at which we move through them. Today we covered 7 years of decision-making among 18 people in about 4 hours. Making decisions in the face of uncertainty and under pressure is difficult, and we all walked away with a greater understanding of how difficult it is to implement adaptive management in a complex system. We also learned how our cultural background influences how we view problem solving. Often, the solutions proposed by the IGERT students were very different than those proposed by our international colleagues.

The next 2 days include more workshops where we learn how to observe the simulations, record meaningful qualitative data, and interact with a variety of stakeholders. This is a busy week for us, but we are learning the basic skills needed to implement these workshops with real stakeholders in Poland, which will take place next month.

I apologize for the brief description, as I could go on about these games for pages, but I wanted to get a quick blog post out on what we have been up to. In addition to work, we have been on quite the culinary tour of Austria - though we haven't had any Viennese food yet (at least as a group). However, we have had delicious Greek, Chinese, Thai, and Nepalese meals. Our hostel is in a wonderful location, and conveniently, there are plenty of microbreweries, cafes, and gelato stands between work and home. We definitely won't starve here; we're much more likely to run out of money first. The restaurant we visited tonight was in a quaint neighborhood with narrow, cobblestone streets lined with cafes and stores set in buildings with beautiful architecture. Vienna is a wonderful city, and we are making sure we play just as hard as we work. Here are a few more pictures from around town - all were taken within walking distance of our hostel.

Hallo!

The IGERT group made it to Austria in tact (but very tired). Our day spent traveling was relatively uneventful and everything went smoothly. All of us and our luggage arrived in Vienna safely, and we made our way to the Happy Hostel to check in. The first day was spent trying not to fall asleep, as we landed around 8:30 am, Vienna time, having gotten little or no sleep on the plane. We met up with Craig, Alan, and our Austrian host Jan for a delicious dinner at Mythos and promptly came back to the hostel to get some much-needed sleep.

Today we had another delicious meal with Craig and Alan and then split up to do some sight-seeing. A couple folks went to check out a couple of Vienna's many art museums, and the rest of us walked to St. Stephen's Cathedral (below).

Most Austrians have been very friendly to us, despite us not knowing much German. In fact, almost everyone has spoken at least some English, and we've been able to get along just fine. A couple of us even managed to figure out the underground train to get back to the hostel. Obviously, it's tricky not speaking the language, but hopefully we will pick up more as we are here longer. In any case, I'd say the first 24 hours have been spectacular, and we are all so happy to finally be here!