Co-design and Co-simulation for Engineering Systems: Insights from the Sustainable Infrastructure Planning Game
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This paper draws on perspectives from co-design as an integrative and collaborative design activity and co-simulation as a supporting information system to advance engineering design methods for problems of societal significance. Design and implementation of the Sustainable Infrastructure Planning Game provides a prototypical co-design platform that leverages the High Level Architecture co-simulation standard. Three role players create a strategic infrastructure plan for agriculture, water, and energy sectors to meet sustainability objectives for a growing and urbaninzing population in a fictional desert nation. An observational human subject study conducts 15 co-design sessions to understand how information system features influence design outcomes. Results show co-simulation facilitates information exchange critical for discovering and addressing interdependencies across role-specific objectives and frequent data exchange is correlated with achieving joint objectives, highlighting the role of co-simulation in co-design settings. Conclusions reflect on the opportunities and challenges presented by co-simulation in co-design settings to address engineering problems for infrastructure systems and more broadly.
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