The 21st Century COE Program called “Center of Excellence for Disaster Mitigation of Urban Cultural Heritage” which was implemented by Ritsumeikan University, has fused science and culture and taken a leading role in establishing the science required mitigating the impact of disasters on cultural heritage. This paper firstly introduced briefly the concept of this COE program and illustrated major risks on cultural heritage protection and conservation. The risks on cultural heritages should be defined more precisely. It is not only external pressure like earthquakes, but also personal attitude or feeling toward heritages that can be a critical hit point in its conceptual existence. Communication between stakeholders on risks that are involved in sharing multiple dimensions of risks and its impact will contribute to ensure reaffirmation of heritage values and enhancing their concrete action for disaster mitigation and heritage conservation. The diversity of simulation & gaming (S&G) methods for disaster mitigation has developed during the COE program in Ritsumeikan University. In the latter part of this paper, some of the unique practices in the COE and ongoing Global COE programs and also future perspectives of S&G are introduced.

The author discusses “Simulation & Gaming and Ethics” in terms of facilitation and debriefing. First, topics on “forcing students to participate in games” and “hurting participant’s feelings in games” are discussed. These topics, taken up by Kikkawa (2007), are reconsidered from the viewpoint of facilitator and participant. Second, how the facilitation is influenced by the size of class is discussed. When the class exceeds the appropriate size, facilitation of gaming becomes very difficult. In addition, the merits and demerits of debriefing, and the ethics of facilitator are discussed. About debriefing, the meaning and methods of debriefing are briefly overviewed, and its difficulty is described from the characteristics of debriefing. Then, facilitator’s responsibility is explained. Finally, the ethics of participants is discussed.

We proposed a concept of context-discordance role-playing gaming for supporting local citizens to make plans for community building in another article (2003). In this article, effectiveness of the gaming is shown on the subject more realistic of community building. The gaming has two worlds, one is a virtual world and the other is a real world. Each player in both worlds argues and discusses with each other on a desirable community design in parallel and repeatedly. The real world consists of real citizens who are all stakeholders in community building. Role-players in the virtual world are quite enlightened about knowledge of the real world and about motivation for community building.

The experiment was carried out in a special workshop and also in a symposium of JASAG (Japan Association of Simulation and Gaming) Conference in spring 2004. Using the evaluation framework of the former experiment, we could also verify the regional awareness of citizens, especially in citizens who are working in the public sector. Moreover, we analyzed an alternation of substances of players’ arguments in view of illocutionary acts in the progress of discussion stages.

Everyday life offers a treasure house of materials for simulation gaming. If people were able to freely design a simulation game by adopting common experiences, it would be wonderful not only for them but also for the development of simulation gaming. However, designing simulation games can be daunting for beginners. So, this paper provides design examples, which describe the necessary conditions for simulation games and techniques for ensuring smooth play. The examples are designed within a frame that includes all parts of a simulation game on sheets of computer cards (ten cards). The aim of the design is to achieve a minimum size for simulation games.