Serious Games to improve decision-making on the water-land-energy-food-climate nexus

Water, energy, food, land and climate are tightly connected, and actions on one sector impact other sectors, creating feedbacks and unanticipated consequences. SIM4NEXUS (Sustainable Integrated Management for the nexus of water-land-food-energy-climate for a resource-efficient Europe) does address all these resources and their interlinkages, and also account for the possible impact on these elements in response to climate and relevant policy changes. Twelve case studies are implemented to test them at different scales (i.e. regional, national, transboundary, European and global). Barriers to a resource efficient and low-carbon Europe are addressed, including policy inconsistencies and incoherence and knowledge gaps related to the complex interactions.

Gaming has been established as means for understanding policies, leading to acceptance, mitigating conflicts and seeking for compromise. However, to our best knowledge, never has a Serious Game been developed for the nexus, and based on such extensive list of scientifically sound models, data and methodologies. Serious Games are developed in SIM4NEXUS as an enhanced visualisation tool, assisting users in better understanding and visualising policies at different scales, towards a better scientific understanding of the Nexus of water-land-food-energy-climate.