A Game Changer for MSP and Social Learning

With the North Sea, the Netherlands has a favourable location for wind energy parks at sea. Therefore, it was agreed in the Climate Agreement in 2019 that by 2030, 16% of all energy in the Netherlands and 75% of current electricity consumption must be supplied by these offshore wind farms. But one might wonder: what about the effects on sea life and the overall marine environment? For this reason, the EU parliament agreed on the Directive on Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP). MSP is a political and administrative process concerning the protection of marine ecosystems and the organisation of human activities in those ecosystems considering ecological, economic and social impacts. To make this work, BUas developed the MSP Challenge Simulation Platform. The platform helps decision makers, stakeholders and students to better understand and manage the maritime economy and marine environment. 

In the study of Dr. Carlos Pereira Santos et al. (2020), the researchers examined the insights and innovations that occurred with the design and development of the platform. They discussed three topics: the requirements of the platform, the design and engineering challenges, and the solutions and innovations that have been developed throughout the years. 

First of all, the requirements of the platform were defined. This was done on the basis of the principles of the EU Directive on MSP. This resulted in the definition of five requirements. The platform should be: 

1. Integrated: with the best available representation of systems, sectors and human activities and the interactions between them.  

2. Evidence-based: with the integration of a large volume and variety of data of different formats and types. 

3. Ecosystem-based: with the communication with one or more science-based ecology models and the possibility to assess the impacts of planning decisions on marine ecology over time. 

4. Transboundary: with the support of international consultation and collaboration. 

5. Considering stakeholder consultation: with the incorporation of the processes and values of planners and stakeholders.  

Next, they looked at the design and engineering challenges of the platform. The requirements listed above generated six design challenges ranging from the game architecture that should be flexible and portable to the engagement of users. The latter was solved with the use of game technology. By designing the platform as an online multiplayer strategy game, users are easier engaged.  

What’s exciting is that the platform can also be used to examine social learning within the MSP community. The game-based platform already showed a significant learning effect. In addition, the architecture of the platform is ready to host editions for other sea regions. In the future they would like to promote not only an EU-wide use, but a worldwide use with the hope of making the MSP Challenge Simulation Platform a standard in integrative marine planning support, in any form whatsoever. 

The MSP Challenge simulation platform is free and open-source software: www.mspchallenge.info

To learn more about this research project, please visit our website: https://pure.buas.nl/en/publications/a-digital-game-based-simulation-platform-for-integrated-marine-sp