Boxed versions soon available of County’s Game of Floods

San Rafael, CA – Further proving that climate change education can be fun, the County of Marin is coming up with a boxed version of its award-winning Game of Floods, which teaches players about adaptation choices to for inevitable sea level rise. The County is taking online pre-orders through April 5. Each set will be about $36 to recover costs, plus around $10 for shipping.

Players work around the board collaboratively and discuss adaptation strategies considering their effectiveness, impacts and relative costs. New boxed game features include a fixed budget, news cards, special action cards, and social and environmental health indicators.

The game, created by Community Development Agency (CDA) staff members and their water resources cohorts from the Department of Public Works, is designed to engage and educate the community about sea level rise vulnerability and adaptation. It allows players to design solutions that protect entire communities as well as individual properties to address the permanent flooding impacts of sea level rise. The challenge requires collective approaches to build solutions that protect access, airports, wastewater treatment facilities as well as smaller communities while dealing with uncertainty and balancing priorities among players.

The game received the Gold 2017 National Planning Achievement Award for Public Outreach from the American Planning Association (APA). Previously it received the California APA’s Public Outreach Award of Excellence, a California State Association of Counties’ Merit Award and the top County of Marin Innovation “Inny” Award.