The Disaster Response Simulation is a board game that simulates a moderate size disaster relief operation. The simulation is played over two days and teaching episodes are interspersed at several critical points. The simulation experience introduces participants to fundamental notions about systems thinking such as constraints and cycle time. To do this, the simulation allows participants to experience some of the key elements of a disaster relief operation from preparedness capabilities through to after-action analysis of the incident. Emphasis is on communication and the decision-making framework with quality service as the goal.

Each game board requires 6-8 players. Up to four boards may be played simultaneously, for a maximum total of 32 participants. Participants are disaster leadership staff.

In the simulation, participants manage a relief operation for a flood that affects four communities. The primary decisions revolve around providing service to people affected by disaster, the human resources and training pipeline, the logistics pipeline, and information flow.

The objectives of the simulation are to:

• Manage the systems of a disaster relief operation.
• Explain the importance of planning and preparedness activities.
• Focus on problem-solving with quality service as a goal.
• Use resources wisely.

The game has built-in mechanisms to track three main performance measures: quality service to clients, improvements in the community's capacity to handle future disasters, and relief operation costs. At the completion of the game, participants debrief first as a team, discussing their decisions around these quality measures and their effectiveness as individual leaders and as a team. Finally, all teams participate in a group debrief which focuses on the impact of the underlying systems of any disaster relief operation.

We are in process of evaluation of the impact of the simulation on Disaster Response. Our preliminary results are positive. Our evaluation process has included interviews with disaster operations managers who have supervised the performance of staff who have attended the simulation. Their comments on performance improvement include:

• Staff are better able to anticipate the performance of the service delivery systems.
• Staff think more systematically before taking action
• Staff are more proactive rather than reactive.
• Staff are better at team building.

In addition, respondents indicated that on operations in which multiple people had attended the simulation there was even greater performance improvement than when only one person had attended.

Based on this simulation, we have consulted with Perot Systems and The Defense Information Agency todevelop business disaster recovery simulations.

Both report good results in using their simulations to create a shared mental model for overall recovery effort.