HESS Hydrology and Earth System Sciences HESS Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 1607-7938 Copernicus Publications Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/hess-16-2523-2012 Irrigania – a web-based game about sharing water resources Seibert J. 1 2 3 Vis M. J. P. 1 Department of Geography, University of Zurich, Switzerland Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Sweden 06 08 2012 16 8 2523 2530 Copyright: © 2012 J. Seibert 2012 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This article is available from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/16/2523/2012/hess-16-2523-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://hess.copernicus.org/articles/16/2523/2012/hess-16-2523-2012.pdf

For teaching about collaboration and conflicts with regard to shared water resources, various types of games offer valuable opportunities. Single-player computer games often give much power to the player and ignore the fact that the best for some group might be difficult to achieve in reality if the individuals have their own interests. Here we present a new game called Irrigania, which aims at representing water conflicts among several actors in a simplified way. While simple in its rules, this game illustrates several game-theoretical situations typical for water-related conflicts. The game has been implemented as a web-based computer game, which allows easy application in classes. First classroom applications of the game indicated that, despite the simple rules, interesting patterns can evolve when playing the game in a class. These patterns can be used to discuss game theoretical considerations related to water resource sharing.

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