AquaGuardians: a tutorial-based education game for population engagement in water management

Abstract

Water management has mainly been dealt with by research institutions and governments with littleengagement from schools, teachers and the population at large. This paper describes AQUAGUARDIANS(AG), an alternate reality, serious game for tutored education. The game offers a cultural environment toengage communities and, hopefully, crowds in water management by means of multimedia reading andwriting experiences in virtual-real world scenarios. AG combines: a) gamified entertainment experiences; b)artistic production coopetitions of individual or collective cultural representations of water by multimediacommunications; and, c) effective actions to save, preserve and monitor community water resources.Applications of AG in two cities suffering from severe water crises in Northeastern Brazil providepreliminary evidence the game improves (learning and water management) success indicators defined byschools and water management agencies.