Serious gaming to improve decision-making in urban stormwater management
Aashna Mittal (TU Delft - Policy Analysis, TU Delft - Water Systems Engineering)
Zoran Kapelan – Promotor (TU Delft - Water Systems Engineering)
Lisa Scholten – Copromotor (TU Delft - Policy Analysis)
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Abstract
This thesis investigates how serious games can be designed and used to improve decision-making for stormwater management in urban areas, which are increasingly vulnerable to intense rainfall due to high surface sealing, urbanization, and climate change. The challenges include limited public awareness of household measures to store and infiltrate stormwater, fragmented decision-making across public and private actors, and lack of collaborative planning platforms. Serious games—used to foster learning and cooperation—offer a promising but underexplored approach to address these barriers. The thesis makes four key contributions: (1) a review of existing serious games in urban water management, identifying gaps in current approaches; (2) a systems analysis methodology to identify relevant actors, elicit their perceptions, and develop a systems map that can be used as a foundation for game design; (3) the design and testing of SUDSbury, a board game to raise awareness among urban residents; and (4) the design and testing of Urban dRain, a case-specific game to support multi-actor collaboration for neighborhood-scale stormwater planning.