Multi-stakeholder development of a serious game to explore the water-energy-food-land-climate nexus: the SIM4NEXUS approach
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Date
2018
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Sušnik, Janez
Chew, Chengzi
Mereu, Simone
Trabucco, Antonio
Evans, Barry
Vamvakeridou-Lyroudia, Lydia
Savić, Dragan A.
Laspidou, Chrysi
Brouwer, Floor
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Abstract
Water, energy, food, land and climate form a tightly-connected nexus in which actions
on one sector impact other sectors, creating feedbacks and unanticipated consequences. This is
especially because at present, much scientific research and many policies are constrained to single
discipline/sector silos that are often not interacting (e.g., water-related research/policy). However,
experimenting with the interaction and determining how a change in one sector could impact
another may require unreasonable time frames, be very difficult in practice and may be potentially
dangerous, triggering any one of a number of unanticipated side-effects. Current modelling often
neglects knowledge from practice. Therefore, a safe environment is required to test the potential
cross-sectoral implications of policy decisions in one sector on other sectors. Serious games offer such
an environment by creating realistic ‘simulations’, where long-term impacts of policies may be tested
and rated. This paper describes how the ongoing (2016–2020) Horizon2020 project SIM4NEXUS will
develop serious games investigating potential plausible cross-nexus implications and synergies due
to policy interventions for 12 multi-scale case studies ranging from regional to global. What sets
these games apart is that stakeholders and partners are involved in all aspects of the modelling
definition and process, from case study conceptualisation, quantitative model development including
the implementation and validation of each serious game. Learning from playing a serious game is
justified by adopting a proof-of-concept for a specific regional case study in Sardinia (Italy). The value
of multi-stakeholder involvement is demonstrated, and critical lessons learned for serious game
development in general are presented.
Citation
Journal or Serie
Water, 2018, vol. 10, núm. 2, p. 139-159