The increase of population in developing countries in the 21st century will be representing a new challenge in matter of urban growth. There are several critical aspects concerning this scenario: for example the city layouts, security issues, transportation, health care and especially the energy, food and water management.
So, in order to enhance awareness of the complexity of these aspects, mainly quantitative, but difficult to directly evaluate, the purpose is a 3D Serious Game, called Megacity, in which the gamers can take a first, basic contact with the energy and goods supply problem. The aim is to spread information about a future scenario: the user, through a simple interface, can take some hypotheses starting from a green field approach, about population growth, consumption per capita, GDP per capita, rate of renewable energy sources, rate of energy by wind or sun and many other.
The stochastic simulator beyond the Serious Game calculates and generates the virtual 3D world consistently with the set-up parameters, in order to evaluate the efficiency and the consequences of the choices. The main advantage of this Serious Game is the possibility to assess the scenario in a simple way through the 3D environment considering several different aspects at the same time, like CO2 produced, CO2 saved, emissions, number of required assets, city dimensions and others.
The user can have an overall view about the scenario and he/she can navigates within the virtual world focusing on the specific asset and modify them.
Megacity Serious Game is actually a prototype version considering only energy and trade aspects, future version will introduce other modules taking care about other main issues of the Megacity scenario and could become a decision making support tool for future policy makers.