Promoting Collaboration in
City Governments

• Practitioners, e.g., city staff or leadership, community members, or organizations

• Students and instructors can also use this course to enhance their understanding of how collaboration across sustainability, emergency management, and resilience can improve climate change adaptation strategies.

This is done by fostering your understanding of the key competencies needed to leverage your connections, assets, and strategies within your organization and by deepening your understanding of the concepts of sustainability, emergency management, and resilience. Additionally, to actively foster collaboration within a city government, so-called “serious games” are used, which are game-based approaches meant to convey information for educational purposes (not just entertainment). 

The training series consists of 5 distinct steps: 

1. an introductory meeting, 

2. three serious games (each linking to one of the three fields), and 

3. a wrap-up meeting.

The modules on this site provide you with some background information on how the trainings were developed and the concepts of sustainability, emergency management, and resilience. Additionally, the modules provide you with insights on key aspects of using and facilitating the training series and provide you with resources and information needed to facilitate the training series yourself. You can explore the modules in the suggested sequence or jump around to find the information and activity most relevant to your efforts.

Participants in this course will learn how to:

(1)   foster collaboration across departments within the city;

(2)   foster an understanding of key concepts—emergency management, sustainability, and resilience—and

(3)   facilitate an understanding of what these concepts mean in practical ways and for their departments.

This capacity-building program and the trainings are based on the work done by Susila Bhagavathula, Dr. Katja Brundiers, Prof. Michael Stauffacher, and Dr. Braden Kay based on the publication: Bhagavathula, S., Brundiers, K., Stauffacher, M., & Kay, B. (2021). Fostering collaboration in city governments’ sustainability, emergency management, and resilience work through competency-based capacity building. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 63, 102408. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2021.102408.

Kind thank you for letting us use the games and training:
Darrell Duty, City of Tempe Fire Medical Rescue
Andrea Glass, City of Tempe Fire Medical Rescue
Dr. Lauren Withycombe Keeler, ASU School of Future of Innovation in Society
USDN – Urban Sustainability Directors Network

Works cited:
Baja, K. (2018). USDN Game of Heat: Toolkit and Resources. Urban Sustainability Directors Network. Accessed online at https://www.usdn.org/uploads/cms/documents/game_of_heat.zip.

Keeler, L. W., Gabriele, A., Kay, B. R., & Wiek, A. (2017). Future Shocks and City Resilience: Building Organizational Capacity for Resilience and Sustainability through Game Play and Ways of Thinking. Sustainability: The Journal of Record, 10(5), 282–292. https://doi.org/10.1089/sus.2017.0011