The world is becoming increasing urbanised, and the “urban triad” of complex man-made terrain, a human population and supporting infrastructure offers a host of evolving challenges to any military contemplating operations in the urban environment. This session will present an overview of the work so far on my PhD in wargaming urban conflict including: a (very) brief history of urban conflict; a consideration of some of the key characteristics of modern urban warfare (and how those are challenged or reinforced by events in Gaza and the Ukraine); an initial analysis of existing urban wargames and an outline of the urban wargames that I have been working on so far. The presentation will end by examining the issues of civilians, civilian infrastructure and civilian livelihoods in urban conflict and urban wargames.

David Burden has been a wargamer and creator of wargames for around 50 years – although ironically not for the 10 years he spent in the British Army. David founded Daden Limited in 2004, working mainly in virtual reality and conversational AI. Whilst working with the UK MOD to automatically generate social media to support urban wargames David developed a wider interest in the issues of urban conflict and how they could best be wargamed. David started his part-time PhD on wargaming urban conflict at Bath Spa University under Dr John Curry in early 2022, and is currently researching the unique features of urban warfare and how it has been wargamed in the past. Alongside book research and interviews David is also designing new wargames looking at different aspects of the urban challenge. David is an ex-Royal Signals officer, a Chartered European Engineer, a TEDx presenter, and is also series co-editor for Taylor & Francis on their Metaverse Series of books.

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