Transcript Introduction to the Resilience Game

The Tower of
Babylon
Developed by:
Dirk Boldeheij, Dennis Meadows,
Stefan Rometsch, Simón Schwarz,
Joanna Srednicka, Stanislav Vavilov
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Play The Tower of Babylon
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Team Goal
Your team will build the structure that
best meets your goal using only the
provided blocks and not more than 5
minutes.
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Rules
• After I say “START,” take up to two minutes to decide
which goal and general strategy you will use to guide
your design of the structure. Stop when you have
written 1 or 2 sentences that describe your goal.
During this discussion, do not touch the blocks.
• When all teams have finished their strategy session, I
will say “GO!” Then take up to five minutes for
construction. Build your structure on the plate
provided using only the blocks. Stop when you are
finished. Then I will ask you to measure your structure
and I will plot the results
• You can communicate with your team members by
drawing or talking during the entire exercise.
• No communication and no trading of blocks is
permitted between teams.
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Construction Results
Tower Height (cm)
Team #1
Team #2
Team #3
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“START!” You have up to 2 minutes to
decide on the goal and the general
strategy you will use in designing your
structure. During the discussion, do
not touch the blocks. Stop and raise
your hand when you are finished with
your discussion.
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When I say “GO!” You will have up to 5 minutes
to build your structure on the plate provided.
Use only the blocks. Use the aluminum plate as
a base for your structure. You do not need to
use all the blocks. Stop when you are finished.
Then you will measure your structure, and I will
plot the result. (At this point I will lay a ruler on
each team’s table)
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Useful Vocabulary
• Resilience is the ability to absorb a shock and
quickly regain the ability to perform essential
functions.
– If a resilient system continues to perform without
pause, we say it is durable.
– If a resilient system quits performing briefly and
then resumes, we say it is flexible.
• If a system is not resilient, we say it is brittle.
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Main Lessons of the Game
• There are many possible goals when deciding
how to build something new. But normally they
try to maximize some concrete measure of shortterm results.
• When first they build something, normally they
do not expect there will be a big shock to reduce
your results.
• There is normally a conflict between building for
short-term results, versus building for long term
resilience.
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Short-term Results
Trade-off between Resilience and Short-term Results
Resilience
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Determining the
resilience of a system
Essential
Inputs
energy, information,
clean water, raw materials,
manufactured parts, labor,
income
Family, City,
Company, State,
or Country
Essential
Outputs
wastes, reputation
Information, products,
payments
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Evaluating for resilience
• What types of shocks could occur?
• What is the probability of the shock over the
lifetime of the structure?
• How large might the shocks be?
• How long would the shock possibly last?
• Could there be synergies among shocks?
• Interruption of essential outputs could be :
– unnoticed, minor irritation, serious problem, lethal
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Five Ways to Increase
Resilience
• Improve Efficiency:
– Efficiency is the ratio (output/input) You an increase efficiency by improving
the conversion process (technology change) or by preferring different outputs
(cultural change)
• Raise the Barrier:
– Increase the resistance against shock (stronger or higher barriers)
• Increase Redundancy:
– Internally by building alternative technical systems
– Externally by making social networks stronger
• Create more Buffering:
– Decouple inputs from outputs (build bigger buffers)
• Develop better Predictions:
– Identify new variables to measure.
– Reduce the delays in measuring
– Reduce the errors in measuring.
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TB Lessons applied to Climate Change
• What are the short-term goals for the Austrian
economy?
• What possible shocks might climate change
bring that would prevent achieving the goals?
• How resilient is the economy today?
• What could you do to increase the resilience
of the country vis a vis future climate change
shocks?
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Within your team
discuss the following :
• What were the possible goals that you could use in
judging your structure?
• What goal did your team choose?
• Why did you pick that goal?
• How did you feel when the shock occurred?
• If you were to build a structure again, would you
change the goal? If yes, how?
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Team Goal
Your team will build a stable structure
using only the provided blocks and not
more than 5 minutes.
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