SimBasin: Serious gaming for integrated decision making in the Magdalena-Cauca basin

Joanne Craven**, Héctor Angarita*, Dr. Gerald Corzo, Daniel Vásquez

*Presenting authorhector.angarita@tnc.org

** Corresponding authorsimbasin@hilab.nl

Agriculture

Fisheries

Hydropower

Wetlands and flood prone areas

Why using a serious game?

… Among others

Why using a serious game?

What is SimBasin?

… is a multiplayer “serious game” for water planning

… a science communication tool: • The complex, non-linear, positive an negative, direct and indirect, medium and long

term, feedbacks that occur in a basin • The concepts of uncertainty and risk in water management• The concept of a decision support system

… a cooperative environment, based on a scientific analysis framework (WEAP + ELOHA + BAT), where ACTUAL experts from different disciplines and development goals can decide with a shared understanding of basin level impacts.

Delta Game (Deltares)AquaRepublica (DHI)SimBasin (TNC)and others

The game itself:A “fictional” basin

The players will guide the development of the basin for thenext 30 years

Every five years, multisectorial decisions rounds for: agriculture, hydropower, flood risk management and

conservation will take place

A dashboard is available for the players:

Flooding at Menestrey

Inundación at Alloa

Ecosystem health: Rivers, Forests, and wetlands

Basin hydropower production

Basin Agricultural production

Each water dependent sector has 1 or more indicators:

GAMEGame engine and graphical Interface: Excel + VBAControls WEAP parametrization, model run and reads results using WEAP-APIPost-Process results with ELOHA and BAT scripts.

WEAP model of the fictional basin:• Monthly time step• A simplified versión of the Magdalena-Cauca Model• 9 catchments

• Irrigation enabled• 2 floodplains

• 2 x 30 years of climate data• Infrastructure:

• 8 reservoirs• 1 diversion

X

In 2 tables:- Players representing different sectors CAN

talk- All indicators are visible for all players

In 2 tables:- Players of different sectors CANNOT

talk- All indicators are visible for all players

Table 1 Table 2

Table 4Table 3

Can

no

t ta

lkC

an t

alk

Table 1 Table 2

Table 4Table 3

Can

no

t ta

lkC

an t

alk

Conclusions:

Serious gaming as a science comunication tool:

“A river, though, has so many things to say that is hard to know what it says to each of us”.

Norman MacClean

However, in our case, making indicators public for all the stakeholders, narrowed themessage

Very often the players “mental models” didn’t match the “simulation model”:• Players mental models were often more complex than game logic. Were influenced by Colombian

context, and specifically environmental laws and regulation.• Mental models fail to grasp the scope and extent downstream and long term trade-offs.• Players were more sentitive to system current status (the actual value of the indicator) than to risk

condition.

More conclusions:

Simbasin as a multiplayer serious game for basin planning:

In dialog allowed tables:• Risk among sectors was overall evenly distributed.

• Players were “comfortable” with trade offs, even when not anticipated.

• Had the lower number of catastrphic events in 30 years.

In dialog forbiden tables:• After the game was over, players recrimiated each other decisions.

Main developer: Joanne Craven, MSc. Masters thesis for MSc ERASMUS MUNDUS in Flood RiskManagement studied at UNESCO-IHE, TU Dresden, UniversitatPolitècnica de Catalunya and the University of Ljubljana.

Game narrative design: Hector Angarita, Daniel Vasquez (TNC) and CarolinaUrrutia (Semana magazine)

Graphics: Punto Aparte

Acknowledgments:

Marisa Escobar and SEI-Asia: beta testing session in Bangkok;

Miguel Laverde Barajas from UNESCO-IHE: beta testing session in Delft;

Sponsors: FMSD and USAID

SimBasin Credits:

Game materials, tools and source code are now publicand available for download at:

http://simbasin.hilab.nlsimbasin@hilab.nl