Role playing games: a methodology to acquire knowledge for integrated wastewater infrastructures management in a river basin scale

Current management of sanitation infrastructures (sewer systems, wastewater treatment plant, receiving water, bypasses, deposits, etc) is not fulfilling the objectives of up to date legislation, to achieve a good ecological and chemical status of water bodies through integrated management. These made it necessary to develop new methodologies that help decision makers to improve the management in order to achieve that status. Decision Support Systems (DSS) based on Multi-Agent System (MAS) paradigm are promising tools to improve the integrated management. When all the different agents involved interact, new important knowledge emerges. This knowledge can be used to build better DSS and improve wastewater infrastructures management achieving the objectives planned by legislations. The paper describes a methodology to acquire this knowledge through a Role Playing Game (RPG). First of all there is an introduction about the wastewater problems, a definition of RPG, and the relation between RPG and MAS. Then it is explained how the RPG was built with two examples of game sessions and results. The paper finishes with a discussion about the uses of this methodology and future work.