The Nexus Game

决策游戏，或通常称为严肃游戏（“不以娱乐为主要目的的游戏”）的全球使用正变得越来越流行，并且允许玩家/利益相关者体验出于安全、成本、时间或其罕见发生的原因而在真实的世界中不可能的情况。严肃游戏应用的例子包括医疗保健、公共政策、国防、培训和教育等领域。与传统的博弈论或运筹学不同，在传统的博弈论或运筹学中，场景或问题通常是结构良好的，而严肃的博弈可以模拟更复杂、动态、不确定、社会耦合的场景，这些场景被称为“邪恶问题”，在真实的世界中普遍存在。水的供应和需求、粮食生产以及能源供应和消费在物质、社会和经济上密切相关，形成了水-粮食-能源关系，这是一个相互关联的系统，由于预计的需求增长，这一系统越来越令人关切。支持水-食品-能源关系的基础设施的规划和管理的战略决策就是这种邪恶问题的一个例子。因此，它可以从利用模拟模型的技术优势和多玩家/利益相关者参与游戏执行的社会优势中受益。严肃游戏方法为战略决策支持工具提供了潜在的变革能力，与难以捕捉复杂系统的社会技术挑战的纯技术模拟或优化方法相比，可以更好地管理复杂的基础设施系统。Nexus游戏将模拟Nexus系统的演变，玩家通过各种选择变量/干预来干预系统的动态。这不仅是从单纯关注技术问题的方法的范式转变，也是从分别关注单个Nexus组件的政策和监管制度的转变。

The worldwide use of decision games, or often called Serious Games ('games that do not have entertainment as their primary purpose'), is becoming more popular and allows players/stakeholders to experience situations that are impossible in the real world for reasons of safety, cost, time or their rare occurrence. Examples of Serious Gaming applications include domains as diverse as healthcare, public policy, defence, training and education. In contrast to traditional Game Theory or Operations Research where scenarios or problems are typically well structured, serious gaming can simulate more complex, dynamic, uncertain, socially-coupled scenarios, referred to as "wicked problems" that are prevalent in the real world. Water supply and demand, food production and energy provision and consumption are intimately linked physically, socially and economically, forming the Water-Food-Energy Nexus, an interconnected system that is increasingly a cause for concern due to projected demand growth. Strategic decision making for planning and management of infrastructure supporting the Water-Food-Energy the Nexus is an example of such wicked problems. It can, therefore, benefit from leveraging the technical strengths of simulation models and the social strengths of multi-player/stakeholder engagement in a game execution. The Serious Gaming approach offers potentially transformative capabilities to strategic decision-support tools to provide better management of complex infrastructure systems compared to purely technical simulation or optimisation methods that have difficulty in capturing the socio-technical challenges of complex systems. The Nexus Game will simulate the evolution of the Nexus system with player(s) interfering in a system's dynamics through various choice variables/interventions. This represents a paradigm shift not only from the approaches that focus solely on technical issues, but also a shift from policy and regulatory regimes that concentrate on individual Nexus components separately.