The Nexus Game

Completed

Other Cross-Cutting Technologies or Research
Not Energy Related

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Applied Mathematics)

Systems Analysis related to energy R&D (Energy modelling)
Systems Analysis related to energy R&D (Other Systems Analysis)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)
Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Other sociological economical and environmental impact of energy)

Professor D Savic
Wastewater and Reuse
KWR Watercycle Research Institute

Standard

EPSRC

31 March 2015

30 September 2017

30 months

£251,493

Civil eng. & built environment

Overseas

NC : Engineering

Professor D Savic, Wastewater and Reuse, KWR Watercycle Research Institute

The worldwide use of decision games, or often called Serious Games ('games that do not have entertainment as their primary purpose'), is becoming more popular and allows players/stakeholders to experience situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons of safety, cost, time or their rare occurrence. Examples of Serious Gaming applications include domains as diverse as healthcare, public policy, defence, training and education. In contrast to traditional Game Theory or Operations Research where scenarios or problems are typically well structured, serious gaming can simulate more complex, dynamic, uncertain, socially-coupled scenarios, referred to as "wicked problems" that are prevalent in the real world.Water supply and demand, food production and energy provision and consumption are intimately linked physically, socially and economically, forming the Water-Food-Energy Nexus, an interconnected system that is increasingly a cause for concern due to projected demand growth. Strategic decision making for planning and management of infrastructure supporting the Water-Food-Energy the Nexus is an example of such wicked problems. It can, therefore, benefit from leveraging the technical strengths of simulation models and the social strengths of multi-player/stakeholder engagement in a game execution. The Serious Gaming approach offers potentially transformative capabilities to strategic decision-support tools to provide better management of complex infrastructure systems compared to purely technical simulation or optimisation methods that have difficulty in capturing the socio-technical challenges of complex systems. The Nexus Game will simulate the evolution of the Nexus system with player(s) interfering in a system's dynamics through various choice variables/interventions. This represents a paradigm shift not only from the approaches that focus solely on technical issues, but also a shift from policy and regulatory regimes that concentrate on individual Nexus components separately

16/07/15