SynchroGaming

In the F&L lab we use serious games to better engage stakeholders, to observe their behavior, to collect behavioral data and to raise awareness on critical freight transport issues. An example of such applications is the SynchroGaming project.

The project investigated the issues faced by different stakeholders to arrive at synchromodal solutions for efficient freight transport.  This project developed a series of serious games that explored the behaviour and interaction of stakeholders and investigated the effectiveness of institutional solutions and policy measures applied to improve synchromodality. It raised the awareness of stakeholders on synchromodality and to promote information sharing and collaboration between actors.

Project Approach

We designed five games addressing the needs of different types of stakeholders. Specifically, we developed:

• The digital game SynchroMania was developed to help shippers understand the importance of making bookings without imposing mode restrictions.
• Two board games are designed to address the issue of rail bundling and cooperation between rail service providers in the ports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam respectively: 1) The Rail Cargo Challenge Rotterdam, and 2) the Rail Cargo Challenge Amsterdam respectively.
• For transport infrastructure managers a digital game the Modal Manager was designed  to help them experiment with the effect of different information provision strategies on  traffic control and network efficiency.
• The MasterShipper’s game investigated the shipper’s preferences for the design of the synchromodal transport product.