Serious Game for Water Wise Neighbourhoods

Water Utilities and Water Authorities are increasingly involved in the development of new sustainable neighbourhoods. Recent examples are Superlocal (Kerkrade, WML) and Brainport Smart District (Helmond, Brabant Water). In these development projects, innovative water technologies, such as water saving, water reuse, resource recovery, rainwater harvesting and decentralised water production, play a vital role in achieving sustainability. Often, these developments are designed as a co-creation process with organisations from outside the water sector, such as municipalities, regional governments, project developers, housing corporations and citizens. These co-creation processes require the input of knowledge about water treatment, distribution and hydrology, as well as socio-economy and governance. KWR has developed knowledge on these topics, yet this knowledge is not always readily available to the co-creation teams. Without this knowledge, it is difficult for the co-creation teams to make design decisions and to assess the impact of the decisions they make regarding potential technologies or practices. Serious Games can be helpful in the transfer of knowledge as well as applying the knowledge in a controlled and safe setting.
KWR has expressed the ambition to develop knowledge and skills in the field of serious games. This study will be one of the first steps in this field. In earlier projects, serious game practices were already developed, such as in the field of area processes in well protection (Gebiedsprocessen in bronbescherming) and radically new sources (radicaal nieuwe bronnen) and a design game for water solutions for circular neighbourhoods.
This report describes the Serious Game for water-wise neighbourhoods, developed in the context of the Explorative Research of KWR in conjunction with BTO WiCE and the H2020 project NextGen. The document is structures as follows: After the introduction (Chapter 1), Chapter 2 provides an overview of the recent literature on serious games. In Chapter 3 stakeholder involvement in the form of a workshop and interviews is described, leading to the development of a first concept. This conceptual design is further explained in Chapter 4. Chapters 5 and 6 focus on the backendand frontend design respectively, while the final chapter (Chapter 7) includes some recommendations for further development.