Design with Nature & Rainwater Management: APEGBC organized and UBC-Okanagan hosted Water Balance Model Training Workshop in 2006

August 27, 2006 - Posted in Design with Nature

Rainwater Management and ‘Green’ Subdivision Design

In February 2006, the University of British Columbia Okanagan was the venue for a training workshop on the Water Balance Model for British Columbia, a web-based decision support and scenario modeling tool for rainwater source control evaluation.

Organized by the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of BC (APEGBC) in collaboration with the Inter-Governmental Partnership, the workshop was initiated by the City of Kelowna to provide Southern Interior design professionals and others with hands-on training in a computer lab setting.

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To read the complete story, visit Design with Nature & Rainwater Management: UBC-Okanagan hosted Water Balance Model training workshop in February 2006

Design with Nature Game Show

One of the features of the workshop was the Design with Nature Game Show. Created by Richard Boase and Kim Stephens to stimulate the creative thinking of workshop participants, the ‘game show’ is similar to the tv show Jeopardy in that participants work in teams and are asked to respond to photographs by stating “What design with nature means is…”

According to Richard Boase, “It is a way of having some fun at the start of the workshop. It loosens the group up. It gets them thinking about real things, on the ground, so that they can begin to see how use of the Water Balance Model will help them in their day jobs. We have them work in teams, and we award them points for a correct answer.”

“It is fascinating to see how excited and ‘into it’ people get after a few minutes. The irony is that the grand prize is one hour of personal tutoring by me by phone. Just imagine what they would be like if there was a real prize!  It just goes to show how  important it is to make a computer modeling workshop fun. If people have fun, they will get more out of the day and perhaps some of the philosophical stuff will actually stick.”