Is your university prepared for extreme events? Using serious gaming to dialog about organizational capacities

Purpose The rise of disaster risk scenarios poses new challenges for higher education institutions (HEIs), requiring them to develop organizational capacities to prepare for extreme events and disasters. This paper proposes and applies a serious game approach to promote collective reflection on whether (and to what extent) a university is prepared for extreme event scenarios, examining how organizational capacities emerge when the academic community must make decisions under pressure and uncertainty. Design/methodology/approach The serious game draws on an organizational capacity framework combining two dimensions: technical-administrative and political–relational capacities. A serious game-based methodology was adopted for its potential to create a simulated environment where participants engage in structured dialog about disaster preparedness in HEIs. Throughout the game, participants negotiate priorities, allocate limited resources and confront mutually exclusive choices, making visible how organizational preparedness capacities are constructed through decision-making. Findings Most groups prioritized wildfires, reflecting local risk history. Surprise cards reinforced the need for adaptation under polycrisis conditions. While infrastructure, related to technical-administrative capacities, was widely prioritized, the game revealed limits in addressing non-structural measures, especially through outreach/extension activities, which are associated with political–relational capacities. Departmental fragmentation and weak cross-area dialog were identified as barriers to integrated responses and organizational capacity. Originality/value Research on how HEIs prepare for extreme events remains scarce, with Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) education often fragmented across departments. The main scientific contribution of this study is to open a research agenda on institutional preparedness within HEIs by creating and applying a serious game that promotes collective reflection on their organizational capacities for extreme events.