A Serious Game and Artificial Agents to Support Intercultural Participatory Management of Protected Areas for Biodiversity Conservation and Social Inclusion

Abstract

This paper addresses our experience in the design of a serious game, aimed at computer-based support for intercultural participatory management of protected areas (e.g., parks, marine reserves, biosphere reserves...), in order to promote biodiversity conservation and social inclusion. Its objective is, via a computer assisted role-playing game, to help various stakeholders (e.g., environmentalist, tourism operator, traditional community...) to collectively understand conflict dynamics and explore negotiation strategies for the management of protected areas. Therefore, this helps at mutual understanding and negotiation between different cultures, contexts and practices (traditional community, technical manager, environmentalist...) about strategic issues when aiming at both biodiversity conservation and social inclusion. After introducing the objectives of our serious game, named Sim Parc, we will describe its design and its current architecture. We will also discuss the introduction of various types of agents in the system: a decision making agent playing the role of the park manager, artificial players replacing some of the human players in the game, assistant agents assisting human players, and expert agents providing human players with technical information about the viability of their proposal (e.g., about the survival of an endangered species), or to analyse relations (e.g., dominance or equity) among players proposals. This last type of agent aims at introducing a technical viewpoint and culture in this intercultural participatory process. Some of these agents have already been implemented and tested and some others are in progress.