CAPTRS Announces New Partnership with The University of L’Aquila (UNIVAQ)

CAPTRS and the CAPTRS Institute are pleased to announce a new international partnership with the University of L’Aquila (UNIVAQ). This collaboration aims to advance education, research, and innovation in emergency and risk management, decision-making, and the design of serious games and simulation environments.

The partnership brings together complementary expertise from both institutions. CAPTRS Chief Scientist Dr. Francesca de Rosa will lead the initiative alongside UNIVAQ professors Antonio Bucchiarone and Alfonso Pierantonio. Professor Bucchiarone contributes with his experience in adaptive socio-technical systems and motivational digital systems driven by gamification. Professor Pierantonio is a leading expert in Model-Driven Engineering (MDE), with a focus on model transformation, complex model management, and the cognitive processes underpinning modeling tools.

At the core of this partnership is a shared commitment to harnessing the power of MDE to structure and streamline the development of serious games for crisis preparedness. The collaboration has already initiated the design of models and meta-models that allow to scaffold the behaviors and reasoning of agent-based solutions that are intended to support designers—regardless of their technical background, in building rigorous and context-aware crisis management games.

“Our collaboration is already yielding very promising results, paving the way for a thoughtful and robust integration of next-generation AI-powered solutions into the design and delivery of serious games and simulation tools for crisis management,” said Dr. de Rosa. “The new approaches will ensure the preservation of meaningful human control while enhancing the potential of organizations and nations to scale the use of game-based methodologies in preparing for future threats."

This partnership not only furthers CAPTRS’s mission to improve emergency preparedness through game-based methods but also contributes to advancing the foundational science of modeling and simulation. UNIVAQ’s recognized excellence in engineering and applied research makes it an ideal partner for exploring how formal modeling techniques can drive meaningful innovation across both educational and operational domains in crisis management.