Planning as Gaming or Gaming as Planning

1. Planning as GamingorGaming as Planning Murray Turoff, Michael Chumer Starr Roxanne Hiltz Information Systems Department (C) Murray Turoff 2006

2. Spectrum of Planning competitive/military/nature (C) Murray Turoff 2006

3. Player Assumptions* *Problem: Nature seems to be increasing her resources (C) Murray Turoff 2006

4. Nature of Defense Plan or Offense Threat • Scenario is a collection of events • Defense only events is a plan • Offense only events is a threat • A combination is an interaction scenario • Events • Require human roles, equipment, and resources • Triggered by and trigger other events • Have objectives and outcome options • Roles and Equipment are constrained by allocation • Current capability determined and desired capability developed (C) Murray Turoff 2006

5. Objectives of the Game • Improve EP plans for unique events • Improve threat scenario development • Stimulate creativity for professionals • Create Situational Awareness • Stimulate mental rehearsal (cognitive maps) • Encourage Critical and reflective thinking • Refine resource and Information System Requirements • Train novices (C) Murray Turoff 2006

6. Approach to Design of Game • Hegelian Inquiry Process • Opposing World Views (Plan and counter plan) • Synergistic combinations • Delphi Aspects • Iteration for improvement • Pennames • Defense Conservative & Offense Conservative • Set up resource constraints • Middle ground between optimistic and pessimistic (C) Murray Turoff 2006

7. Totally Asynchronous Game • Uses an group communication system such as WebBoard/Webct/Moodle • Initial Design avoids any special software additions • Allows individual to participate at any time of the day or night from any location • Everyone can have a pen name • Continuous 3-5 hours a week for as long as one wants (C) Murray Turoff 2006

8. Generality of the Game • A threat can be: • A terrorist action • A natural disaster • A Competitive company threat • etc • Use of competitive rounds to stir creativity • Continuous to allow reflective thinking • Collaboration of teams dealing with a similar problem to help good ideas to emerge in a large scale consensus • Threat team can be designing the properties and details of a competitive product, a flood, or an earthquake (C) Murray Turoff 2006

9. (C) Murray Turoff 2006

10. Current Findings • WebBoard alone is insufficient based upon two field trials (threaded discussions not content rich) • Collaborative writing that combines associative and hierarchical “structures” i.e. some structure to the plan creation process • Need is to have a collaborative data base (currently a thesis topic) (C) Murray Turoff 2006

11. Creative Collaboration • Being able to easily build, fit together and tailor components in what is almost a virtual Lego system • It is the process of evolving alternatives and allowing creativity among the group. • Creating an ongoing library of pieces creates a data base that allows an organizational memory and new creations made easier for many teams to contribute ideas • Collaborative knowledge building (C) Murray Turoff 2006

12. Challenge for Emergency Planning • The total team does not exist until the emergency • There is no major physical system nor team that exists before • No way to build an HRO (High Reliability Organization), except by • Introduction of a continuous virtual system such as the “game” • The asynchronous team and the knowledge building process creates the HRO conditions (C) Murray Turoff 2006

13. Emergency ManagementProblems for becoming an HRO • Planning often done by people that will not be part of the real response team • Plans often inadequate or unrealistic • Exceptions not considered • Knowledge is not accumulate and maintained over long periods • It is time for Emergency Management to become a discipline (C) Murray Turoff 2006