A Perspective-Based Simulation Game to Explore Future Pathways of a Water-Society System Under Climate Change

Abstract

In this article, the authors address the challenge of including societal responses, society-environment interactions, discontinuity, and surprise in environmental scenario analysis. They do so through developing and testing a perspective-based simulation game for a typical Dutch river stretch. Concepts deriving from Cultural Theory, the Advocacy Coalition Framework, and Transition Theory provide the input for the game design. Players take on the role of water managers, responding to events and developments in the water-society system under specific realizations of a climate scenario. Responses include the choice for specific river management options, changing coalition perspectives, and changes in advocacy coalition membership. A pilot case study shows that the simulation game is a useful tool to explore possible future river management dynamics. It generates relevant insights in the water management strategies that may be chosen under future conditions, the possible drivers underlying future societal perspective change, and the way advocacy coalitions may interact. As such, the simulation game offers great potential for developing and assessing policy relevant climate adaptation pathways, in which water-society interaction, discontinuity, and surprise is taken explicitly into account. The main challenges for future research Article at GEORGIAN COURT UNIV on March 31, 2015 sag.sagepub.com Downloaded from

Serious Gaming for Water Systems Planning and Management

“…The main differences between this and the game by Valkering et al [26] are: (i) that there are different roles played by participants (e.g., farmers, local authorities and water authorities) with different spatial influence (of their decisions) and often conflicting objectives (e.g., protection of biodiversity, maximisation of profit and economic efficiency) requiring a conflict resolution strategy; (ii) that in addition to facilitators, there are observers associated with each team of players; and (iii) both a physical game board (showing the river and land parcels at different elevations, which are assigned various types of farming activities, e.g., crop cultivation, animal husbandry, orchard, etc.) and a simple stylised model defining critical relationships and processes are used.…”

“…The results seem to be presented to the teams by the facilitators. Valkering et al [26] conclude that based on the analysis of results, it is possible to identify opportunities, no-regret strategies, dead ends and timing of strategy, all of which can be used by policy makers to develop water management roadmaps into the future. It is also interesting to note that the developers introduced an element of surprise into the game by providing newspaper headlines (portraying generally unforeseen yet plausible contextual events) and unpredictable occurrence of extremely high or low flows.…”

“…Valkering et al [26] and Van der Wal et al [27] use a simulation game as a tool to explore possible future river management dynamics in the Netherlands with a view for developing and assessing policy-relevant climate adaptation pathways. The game deals with a virtual river stretch, representative of many low-lying river stretches in the Rhine delta of the Netherlands.…”

“…This also means that players can take a different role to play and are usually collocated while required to cooperate or compete to achieve the goal(s) of the game [23,30,31,36]. Facilitators can also be involved in the game by providing technical support or another player's perspective, e.g., the citizen perspective is played by a project-team member in [26]. Single player games are less common [21,24], although many of the multi-player games can be and are easily played in a single-player mode by the players agreeing on the course of action and implementing it.…”

“…Some games do not require any facilitators, as from the start the players are learning by playing, e.g., SimCity™. However, a majority of complex games require facilitation at the beginning or throughout the entire process [24,26,27,[29][30][31]34,36], while some of them require elaborate introductory workshops to explain the problem [25]. The progress of the game can be influenced by the workshops and the involvement of facilitators, who can engage simply by running the models used to assess a solution proposed by players [36], or even act as "referees", who can answer questions about management strategies or game rules and assist with scoring at the end of the game [34].…”