The Use of Serious Gaming as a Platform for Operator Training and Stakeholder Engagement for Water Distribution Systems

Abstract Submission: While computer models for use in the analysis of the hydraulics and water quality of water distribution systems have been around for several decades, applications of such models have been primarily restricted for use by design engineers or for operational support for large utilities. Their use for stakeholder engagement or even operator training has been somewhat limited, especially for small utilities. This research explores the use of serious gaming as a platform for constructing and implementing simplified models of water distribution systems for use in educating community stakeholders about the nature of their community water supply as well as for use in training operators of small systems. In addition to communicating information about the way the distribution system works, the environment can also allow users (either stakeholders or operators) to explore the impacts of simple operator decisions on system hydraulics, water quality, economics and system resilience. Through repeated applications, the environment can also be used to collect information from operators and stakeholders about individual preferences on water pressures, water quality, and water rates which can provide valuable feedback to system managers, as well as be used to develop agent-based functions of customer preferences for more advanced AI applications. The developed environment is both discussed and demonstrated through a case study with a small water utility in eastern Kentucky.

Learning Objectives/Expected Outcome (Optional) :