Gamifying flood resilience: serious games, playful placemaking, and blue green infrastructure planning

Flooding in the UK is expected to become more frequent because of climate change, creating an urgent need for adaptation. In Scotland, national policy promotes placemaking approaches that integrate blue green infrastructure into urban areas to enhance climate resilience and deliver social, environmental, and economic benefits. Community engagement is central to this process, yet top-down planning approaches often limit participation. Despite recognition of the value of collaborative approaches, guidance on implementation remains limited. The significance of this study lies in addressing this gap in participatory, place-based climate adaptation planning. The aim of this paper is to investigate how human-centred, playful participatory methods, specifically serious games and LEGO® Serious Play®, can facilitate inclusive, place-based adaptation planning. This aim is addressed through a qualitative analysis of three participatory workshops in Dundee and Broughty Ferry, Scotland, involving residents, students, and practitioners. Using these methods within a placemaking framework, participants co-designed locally grounded solutions. Workshop outputs were analysed using Template Analysis to examine adaptation solutions, flood-mitigation functions, and wider co-benefits. Findings show the approach surfaced flood-risk concerns alongside priorities including biodiversity, public amenity, and wellbeing. The originality of this paper lies in demonstrating how playful, human-centred methods support inclusive, context-sensitive climate adaptation planning.