In the BREsilient project, the project team designed a simulation game for representatives from Bremen businesses and administration. The game aimed at making the impacts of extreme weather events and long-term climate change tangible for the participants in a playful way and at collectively developing adaptation measures. The article summarizes the approach, the results and lessons learned.

Good preparation is key to a successful simulation game. At the start of the game, the participants were each assigned a particular role: They represented either a logistics company (rail, inland navigation, port), a food company (fish and vegetables/coffee) or the administration. For the game phase, the simulation team had prepared short situation descriptions in advance, which vividly explained various climate change impacts and their effects on the individual actors. The situations included, for example, "heat wave 2020", "heavy rainfall 2021" and "decline in coffee cultivation areas 2045". The impacts on the companies comprised interrupted or relocated supply and transport chains or crop failures due to drought. Arguing from the perspective of their roles, the participants then discussed the individual situations and developed suitable adaptation measures in each case. The aim of these measures was both to master the current situation and to be better prepared for similar situations in the future.

A central theme that emerged from the discussion was that joint solutions are crucial as the participants both depend on each other and partly compete for the same scarce resources and modes of transport. In the reflection after the game, the participants stated that the simulation game had made the complexity and dependence on other actors transparent and had thus strengthened their awareness of interactions. Discussing future situations also contributed to making climate change impacts tangible and to creatively searching for solutions. The action-motivating effect of the simulation game was also shown in the questionnaire-based evaluation.

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Cover: Gröschel Branding