Collaborative Design in the Sustainable Infrastructure Planning Game

Abstract

The pursuit of sustainable large-scale infrastructure systems demands new design tools to exchange information Among distributed decision-makers. This paper describes and demonstrates interoperable simulation gaming as a collaborative infrastructure design activity. The Sustainable Infrastructure Planning Game (SIPG) is a prototype implementation using the High Level Architecture (HLA) to exchange technical data between sector-specific simulation models. SIPG considers a 30-year strategic planning exercise for a fictional desert nation with three role-players controlling water, energy, and agriculture sectors. A human subjects experiment with 15 ad-hoc teams shows integrated, synchronous tools facilitate data exchange which, Subsequently, is correlated with effective design for common objectives.