Gaming for Peace (GAP)

Coordinated by the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin, Gaming for Peace is a €2M, EU funded Horizon 2020 project. Starting in January 2017, the project will run for two and a half years.

Personnel deployed on Conflict Prevention and Peace Building (CPPB) missions, particularly in high risk areas, need to be equipped with the skills and knowledge to perform successfully from the start of their tour of duty in the respective Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) mission or operation. The Gaming for Peace (GAP) project proposes to fill recognised training gap; embedding a base curriculum of soft skills (communication and cooperation) that facilitates coordination and relationship building in an environment of organisational, gender and cultural diversity.

The trend in number and scale of missions is moving upwards, and the problems underlying these missions are becoming more complex and challenging for the EU to respond to strategically and operationally. Training large numbers of personnel from different organizations and nations is an enormous challenge, in terms of logistics and cost.

New training curricula for enhancing the preparedness and skills of personnel for conflict prevention and peace keeping missions especially in high risk countries contributes to more efficient and effective conflict prevention and peace keeping missions. Ultimately, this should reduce the costs of such missions, whilst at the same time contribute to a more efficient implementation of the CSDP.

GAP will coordinate between various organisations, including peace building stakeholders, policy makers and other international research projects past and current, to conduct a rigorous assessment of current knowledge and existing training related to conflict prevention and peace building in order to capture current best practice. We will identify current gaps in training for the soft skills needed to perform successfully in multicultural EU missions which manifest diverse understanding of operations, gender and culture;

In response to identified training needs, GAP will develop an innovative curriculum and tool for delivery and further development of that base curriculum through the design and play of a multiple player online role playing game. The game will thus be both an innovative tool for delivering training and crucially, a new model in curriculum development, informed by the state of the art in soft skills relevant for CPPB missions and delivered through a Serious Game.

Learnovates Role

In collaboration with the ADAPT Centre at Trinity College, Learnovate’s role is to…

Partners

• Trinity College Dublin (School of Social Sciences and Philosophy)
• Trinity College Dublin (ADAPT Centre)
• Trinity College Dublin (Learnovate Centre)
• Future Analytics Consulting Ltd.
• Haunted Planet Studios Ltd.
• National University of Ireland Maynooth
• University of Ulster
• Police Service of Northern Ireland
• Upskill Enterprise Ltd.
• Laurea-Ammattikorkeakoulu OY
• National Defence University
• Akademia Sztuki Wojennej
• Enquirya BV
• Wyzsza Szkola Policji w Szcytinie
• Institut Po Otbrana
• Ministerio Da Administracao Interna