Serious Game Approach to Water Distribution System Design and Rehabilitation Problems

This paper presents an online, web-based Serious Game developed to investigate end-user behaviour when faced with complex WDS design and rehabilitation problems. SeGWADE (Serious Game for WDS Analysis, Design & Evaluation) couples an innovative and visually attractive interactive front-end with a server-side modelling engine handling real-time hydraulic simulation. A multiplayer online game infrastructure is implemented allowing interactions with a model to be instantly broadcast to both collaborating and competing users. The interactions are recorded and can be subsequently be replayed or analysed through the interface to explore the decision making process in detail. The Serious Game engine is designed to be extensible and can be reconfigured dynamically through an interface allowing the upload of EPANET[1] input files and the parameterisation of different game scenarios permitting a range of games to be developed independently. In addition, the front-end employs adaptive graphics that can switch between HTML5 canvas or WebGL rendering technologies, depending on the client hardware capabilities, in order to deliver the best user experience. The serious game has been evaluated through a classroom-based exercise in which 20 students competed to obtain the best WDS design solution. The results obtained demonstrate a high degree of player engagement with the game.