After an initial game play session with shuffled cards and timers, to illustrate the core structure of decision options and outcome scoring, student teams will play out a set of similarly-structured 3-4 week time blocks with game details based on different weather-sensitive business sector scenarios (agriculture, transport/logistics, energy, insurance, etc.). In these games, weather forecast data sets from GFS archives will be progressively unveiled on an actual week-by-week timeline, through crucial seasons but probably not including the drama of disasters. Data will be drawn from secret years so that players cannot easily peek ahead at the actual weather that verified. Codes will be provided for weather data analysis access, and plausible cost-loss model computations or truth tables expressing how strategic decisions, preparations, and weather variables to define daily and weekly profits and losses. Besides participating and playing each class session's decision cycle, class will include student presentations of the results of strategic research explorations. Specifically, each student will do one or more in-depth project in which they consult published literature, or express the game's sensitivity to tweaks of the weather data (e.g. downscaling from grids), or using other-years or ensemble data archives, or tweaks to the business model code notebooks, etc. Students will be randomly assigned to teams of 2-4, shuffled for each block or game scenario. Different geographical footprints for different firms or portfolios may make each team's situation slightly different, such that competition is not zero-sum or adversarial. An independent study week between each intensive block will provide students time to evaluate and report on outcomes, prepare for the next block, and work on a research project. A final presentation/report on lessons learned, along with anonymized teammate evaluations of individuals' contributions, will determine student ranking... with a little bit of reward (and prestige, perhaps small recognition prizes) for strategic success in the games' scores of course.
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