Earthvism - Dangers and Dwellers: a project to promote civic engagement through a board game on geological hazards

Dangers & Dwellers (Da&Dw) is a strategic board game focused on the sustainable management of geological hazards (earthquakes, landslides, and floods). It is designed to allow players to simulate and experience the complex, multifaceted, and interconnected causal pathways that lead to natural disasters. This level of complexity underlining risk management is often challenging to explain, teach, and comprehend through traditional pedagogical approaches. However, data from pilot sessions has indicated that the game-based learning experience achieves these educational objectives with high efficacy.

The game serves as the foundation for a project selected under the European Union’s Erasmus+ 2025 program (Call KA220-SCH - Cooperation partnerships in school education) titled “Da&Dw Earthvism - Dangers and Dwellers: an Earth sciences game for teachers and students to promote civic engagement and climate action” (Code KA220-SCH-0E3E8994). The project aims to:

• Digitize Da&Dw to enhance accessibility, offering a free-to-play remote version and expanding dissemination worldwide.
• Translate the game into several languages, supplementing the existing Italian and English versions.
• Deploy the tool primarily within high schools across different Countries to foster awareness of natural hazards and climate change, while promoting interest in STEM disciplines.
• Provide educators with a game-based learning instrument to integrate into future curricula.
• Stimulate civic engagement and trust in democratic processes by equipping users with cognitive tools to identify and resist anti-scientific disinformation and misinformation.
• Conduct research on the long-term educational impact of the game.

Through Da&Dw, participants discover that there is no ultimate solution to natural risk mitigation. Conversely, building resilience requires the implementation of complex, well-designed sets of multisectoral actions. These require a synergy of scientific knowledge, a balance of socio-economic interests, and active civic participation. While achieving this equilibrium is challenging, it is attainable within a mature democratic society. In recent years, game-based learning has established itself as an effective methodology for achieving these outcomes.

As part of the project scope, a series of actions are planned to gather feedback essential for the iterative improvement of the game and to maximize its dissemination among high schools, associations, and relevant stakeholders.

The project also aims at reaching new stakeholders (including but not limited to schools, research groups, educators, civil protection actors, groups active in environmental topics) to further improve the dissemination of risk awareness and resilience strategies through innovative game-based learning.