A role-playing game allowing students to experiment the benefits of territory agronomy to prevent natural disasters

This presentation relates to a teaching exercise developed for the training of agronomy graduates at the AgroParisTech (France). Its aim is to show that agronomic knowledge (1) is useful to help us understand the ecological processes at the origin of a disaster, (2) must be related to other knowledge to be really effective in a context of action. The exercise is based on a role-playing game which leads the students to acquire by themselves most of the knowledge needed. The game context is the control of muddy flows in Normandy. The scenario is rather simple. A muddy flow occurs, in Normandy, at the outlet of a small catchment area composed of two villages: Hautville (upstream), and Basville (downstream). The damage occurs in Basville where some individual dwellings and a sugar refinery suffered severely from the muddy flow. A crisis meeting is organized. The students, divided into groups, are asked to play the role of the various participants attending the meeting, including the two mayors, the farmers, the sugar refinery manager and agricultural advisors. They are given specific details and a specific aim for the character they have to play. During the simulated meeting the teachers listen to the exchanges. At the end of the simulation they comment on the technical value of the arguments. Using the initial scenario and the specific details given to each group, the students have to understand that the muddy flow has two major origins. A sugar beet grower in Hautville is responsible for the runoff. A dairy farmer in Basville allowed the erosion of his soil by the concentrated runoff initiated in Hautville because he ploughed a previously permanent meadow. But the disaster is also due to the unsuitability of the damaged buildings downstream. The students are thus brought to propose some agronomic innovations via the collaboration between the different stakeholders attending the meeting. The students generally take a keen interest in this exercise. As a result, they and how the spatial organisation of the cultivation methods may interfere with these phenomena (reducing or increasing them). The students also learn about the roles of the various decision makers involved in the problems and their necessary coordination for the improvement of the environment.