LOTUS

Funding programme

Erasmus+ KA203 – Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education

Project reference

2019-1-DE01-KA203-004973

Period

2019–2022

Coordinating organisation

Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung Kehl (Germany)

Participating countries

Germany, Italy, France, Latvia, Czech Republic

Official project website

Visit official website

LOTUS (Locally Organized Transition of Urban Sustainable Spaces) aimed to strengthen the competences of future urban planners, architects, public administrators and energy professionals in planning and managing sustainable local energy transitions.

The project addressed the need for interdisciplinary education connecting renewable energy technologies, territorial planning, public administration, economic considerations and cooperation between stakeholders.

Its educational approach combined a practice-oriented curriculum, European case studies, a textbook and an original physical role-playing board game called urbEN.

Specific learning objectives

• Urban energy transition: Understand the challenges involved in transforming urban and regional energy systems towards sustainability.
• Renewable energy: Explore the role of renewable energy technologies in meeting local energy needs.
• Energy autonomy: Understand the relationship between territorial energy consumption, renewable production, energy savings and storage requirements.
• Energy system integration: Recognise the interdependence between energy generation, consumption, infrastructure and local planning decisions.
• Urban and regional planning: Examine how territorial characteristics and land-use decisions influence sustainable energy strategies.
• Urban-rural relationships: Understand the complementary roles of cities and surrounding rural areas in the development of local energy systems.
• Stakeholder analysis: Identify the interests, resources, responsibilities and constraints of the actors involved in energy transition.
• Negotiation: Develop the ability to negotiate solutions among stakeholders with different priorities and objectives.
• Collaborative decision-making: Explore how public authorities, residents, businesses and energy operators can cooperate to achieve shared goals.
• Conflict management: Recognise potential tensions between environmental objectives, economic interests and territorial development.
• Public policy: Understand the role of local authorities, administrative processes and regulatory frameworks in energy planning.
• Systems thinking: Analyse the interactions between social, technological, economic and institutional components of urban energy systems.
• Strategic planning: Develop and evaluate alternative approaches to local energy transition.
• Problem-solving: Address complex planning situations involving competing interests and interdependent decisions.
• Professional communication: Practise explaining proposals, presenting arguments and discussing technical decisions with different stakeholders.
• Interdisciplinary cooperation: Encourage collaboration among students and professionals from urban planning, architecture, engineering and public administration.
• Sustainability awareness: Strengthen understanding of the environmental and societal implications of energy-related decisions.
• Transfer of good practices: Learn from European examples of local energy transition and explore their applicability to different contexts.
• Experiential learning: Provide opportunities to experience complex stakeholder interactions through an educational role-playing simulation.
• Educator competences: Equip higher education teachers and trainers with resources for integrating urban energy transition into practice-oriented learning activities.

The urbEN serious game addresses these objectives by placing participants in a fictional territory in which different stakeholders must interact to pursue local energy autonomy.

The wider LOTUS curriculum and case-study collection provide the theoretical and practical context needed to connect the simulated decisions with real-world energy transition processes.

LOTUS developed an original educational tabletop role-playing game called urbEN – Urban Energy Serious Game.

The game was designed within the Erasmus+ partnership to help students, educators and professionals explore the social, technical, economic and institutional complexities of sustainable local energy transition.

The game was developed by Thierry Vilmin (Logiville, France) within the LOTUS consortium and published as an openly accessible print-and-play educational resource.

1. urbEN – Urban Energy Serious Game

urbEN simulates the energy transition of a fictional territory comprising an urban centre and its surrounding rural areas.

Participants adopt the roles of actors involved in the local energy system and explore how their decisions and interactions influence the development of sustainable energy infrastructure.

The shared territorial challenge is to move towards energy autonomy by balancing annual energy consumption with renewable energy production, while considering energy savings and the need for storage.

Game characteristics

• Game type: Custom-designed educational tabletop role-playing game.
• Format: Physical print-and-play board game with supporting documentation.
• Educational theme: Sustainable urban and regional energy transition.
• Setting: Fictional territory combining an urban centre, surrounding rural areas and different land-use characteristics.
• Central challenge: Develop a territorial energy strategy capable of progressing towards local energy autonomy.
• Player interaction: Multi-stakeholder role-playing, negotiation and collaborative planning.
• Primary audience: Higher education students, educators and professionals involved in territorial and energy planning.
• Availability: Openly archived printable game package including game materials, guidance and rules.

Stakeholder roles

The game represents several actors whose resources, interests and responsibilities influence energy transition decisions.

• Local authorities: Public actors responsible for territorial governance and coordination.
• Residents: Citizens whose energy needs and interests form part of the local energy system.
• Local energy operators: Organisations involved in local energy production and distribution.
• National energy operators: Actors associated with wider energy networks and infrastructure.
• Farmers: Rural stakeholders whose activities and land resources are relevant to territorial energy planning.
• Industrial companies: Economic actors with specific energy demands and investment interests.
• Commercial companies: Businesses participating in the local economic and energy system.
• Property developers: Actors whose development decisions influence land use, urban growth and energy requirements.

Main game mechanisms

1. Role-playing: Participants represent stakeholders with different positions within the territorial energy system.
2. Multi-stakeholder negotiation: Players interact to examine proposals and address potentially conflicting interests.
3. Territorial simulation: Decisions are situated within a fictional urban-rural environment.
4. Strategic planning: Participants explore possible approaches to energy production, consumption and infrastructure development.
5. Interdependent decisions: Actions involving one stakeholder may affect other actors and the wider territorial system.
6. Collaborative problem-solving: Progress towards energy autonomy requires consideration of different actors and their respective capacities.
7. Energy-system modelling: The simulation addresses relationships between consumption, renewable production, energy savings and storage needs.
8. Stakeholder perspective-taking: Participants experience the energy transition from institutional, economic and community perspectives.

Territorial and energy-system context

The game represents a fictional territory containing different urban and rural land uses.

Its educational model addresses the complementarity between a town and its surrounding hinterland in the development of local renewable energy systems.

The central energy challenge is not limited to installing renewable energy technologies. It also involves reducing energy demand and considering the intermittent nature of wind and solar production.

These conditions create opportunities to discuss the coordination of technological solutions, territorial planning and stakeholder interests.

Development and testing

The project website reports that urbEN underwent multiple testing and validation iterations before the publication of its print-and-play version on 23 November 2022.

Documented educational uses include university teaching activities, international student exchanges and sessions involving urban planning professionals.

Game availability

The original print-and-play version was published in Zenodo in November 2022. An updated version (v4) was published in September 2024.

urbEN – Latest Print-and-Play Version (v4, 2024)

urbEN – Original Published Version (2022)

The archived package is described by the consortium as containing the materials, guidelines and rules required to prepare and use the game.

The complete downloadable archive has not been independently examined during this review. Consequently, exact player counts, standard playing duration, component quantities and detailed turn-by-turn rules are not reported here.

Game approach

The appropriate classification is Custom-Designed Educational Games.

The project developed an original physical serious game rather than adapting an existing commercial board game.

Its educational value is primarily associated with stakeholder simulation, negotiation and systems thinking, rather than conventional quiz-based learning.

LOTUS adopted an interdisciplinary, practice-oriented approach to higher education, integrating an original tabletop role-playing simulation into the teaching of sustainable urban energy transition.

The game’s methodology reflects the recognition that local energy transition depends on interactions between technological systems, territorial conditions, public institutions, economic actors and citizens.

Through urbEN, participants explore these relationships by representing different stakeholders and negotiating decisions within a fictional urban and regional environment.

Pedagogical foundations

• Experiential learning: Participants explore energy transition challenges by acting within a simulated territorial system.
• Role-playing: Learners represent stakeholders whose interests, resources and responsibilities shape local energy decisions.
• Simulation-based learning: Complex urban energy transition processes are represented through an interactive physical game.
• Systems thinking: Participants examine the interdependence between energy production, consumption, infrastructure, institutions and economic activity.
• Interdisciplinary learning: The activity combines urban planning, engineering, environmental management, economics and public administration.
• Collaborative learning: Players engage in negotiation and coordination to address territorial challenges.
• Practice-oriented education: The simulation complements theoretical teaching and European case studies.

Methodological integration

The project developed four complementary educational resources:

1. Curriculum on Urban Transition of Energy (CUTE): An interdisciplinary educational framework addressing local energy transition.
2. Catalogue of Real Cases (CoRC): Examples of European practices and administrative processes related to sustainable energy planning.
3. urbEN Serious Game: A physical stakeholder simulation allowing participants to explore and negotiate energy transition strategies.
4. LOTUS Textbook: A theoretical and practice-oriented resource supporting interdisciplinary teaching and learning.

Game-based learning process

1. Preparation: Learners become familiar with the fundamentals of sustainable energy transition and the principal actors involved.
2. Territorial introduction: The fictional urban-rural setting provides the geographical and institutional context for the activity.
3. Stakeholder representation: Participants assume roles reflecting different positions within the local energy system.
4. Problem identification: Players examine the challenges associated with energy demand, renewable generation, territorial constraints and stakeholder interests.
5. Strategic interaction: Participants propose and discuss possible approaches to energy transition from their assigned perspectives.
6. Negotiation: Different stakeholders consider competing priorities and opportunities for cooperation.
7. Energy transition planning: Participants explore how coordinated decisions can contribute to reducing dependence on external energy sources.
8. Reflection: The experience can be connected with real-world planning practices and examples documented in the project’s case-study catalogue.

This sequence describes the educational functions supported by the project’s documented approach. The complete print-and-play rulebook should be consulted for the precise order, timing and procedures of gameplay.

Role of the facilitator

LOTUS explicitly incorporated facilitator development into its educational methodology.

The project planned short-term learning, teaching and training activities to prepare higher education staff to act as coaches or game masters for urbEN.

The stated training objective was to prepare at least three game masters per partner country, supporting subsequent dissemination and training.

Facilitators are expected to provide the contextual knowledge necessary to understand the simulation and support the interaction between stakeholders.

The educational role of facilitation is particularly important because energy transition combines specialised technical information with social and institutional decision-making.

Reflection and debriefing

The project’s curriculum, case studies and textbook provide resources for connecting simulated decisions with real urban energy planning challenges.

However, a standardised debriefing protocol with specified questions, assessment instruments and learning indicators has not been independently confirmed from the reviewed public descriptions.

For educational reuse, structured post-game reflection would be valuable for examining the motivations behind decisions, the effects of stakeholder cooperation and the differences between the simulation and real energy systems.

Transferability

The print-and-play format and open educational documentation make urbEN potentially reusable in university courses, professional training and interdisciplinary workshops.

The approach is especially relevant to educational settings addressing complex societal problems that require coordination between multiple actors rather than individual technical solutions.

LOTUS was implemented through an Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership involving six organisations from Germany, Italy, France, Latvia and the Czech Republic.

The project combined interdisciplinary curriculum development, research on local energy transition, educational case studies, the production of the urbEN serious game and activities involving higher education students and professionals.

Participating organisations

• Hochschule für öffentliche Verwaltung Kehl (Germany): Project coordinator, higher education in public administration and local governance.
• Politecnico di Torino (Italy): Urban and regional planning, educational development and university game testing.
• Université Gustave Eiffel (France): Urban engineering, sustainable territorial development and research on local energy transition.
• Logiville (France): Specialist expertise in urban planning role-playing simulations and development of urbEN.
• Riga Technical University (Latvia): Architecture, urban planning and interdisciplinary project activities.
• University of West Bohemia (Czech Republic): Geomatics, territorial information and dissemination activities.

Implementation stages

1. Project launch, September 2019: Establishment of the European partnership and identification of educational needs concerning urban energy transition.
2. Research and curriculum development: Preparation of an interdisciplinary educational framework addressing sustainable urban energy systems.
3. Case-study development: Collection of European experiences concerning local renewable energy, urban planning, administrative processes and sustainability.
4. Game design and prototyping: Development of the urbEN physical role-playing simulation to represent stakeholder interactions and local energy planning decisions.
5. International student exchange, May–June 2022: Students from Hochschule Kehl and French institutions participated in an educational exchange in Brest, where they played urbEN following preparatory work on municipal sustainability.
6. Professional testing, June 2022: urbEN was presented and played at the APERAU international conference in Bordeaux with teaching staff, researchers and urban planning professionals.
7. University testing, November 2022: The game was used at Politecnico di Torino on 21–22 November within a bachelor’s degree course on the economic feasibility of plans and projects.
8. Publication, November 2022: Following several testing and validation iterations, the consortium released the print-and-play version of urbEN through Zenodo.
9. Further university implementation, January–February 2023: The game was tested at Politecnico di Torino within a doctoral-level teaching activity on urban energy transition and serious games.
10. Educational dissemination: The consortium promoted its curriculum, case studies, textbook and game through university activities, multiplier events and public repositories.
11. Resource updates, 2024: Updated versions of the print-and-play game were published in Zenodo after the original project period.

Evidence of implementation

The project provides direct documentary evidence that urbEN was used with different educational and professional audiences.

Documented settings include:

• International student exchanges involving German and French students.
• University courses in territorial, urban, environmental and landscape planning.
• Doctoral-level educational activities addressing urban energy transition through serious games.
• Professional and academic meetings involving teachers, researchers and urban planning practitioners.

These activities demonstrate implementation beyond the initial design and publication of the game.

Evaluation approach

The consortium reports that urbEN underwent multiple testing and validation iterations before public release.

The publicly available documentation also identifies educational sessions at several institutions and later updates to the game resources.

However, the reviewed sources do not provide a consolidated quantitative evaluation of the game’s educational impact.

Evidence limitations

• Participant numbers: A consolidated total of learners who played urbEN has not been established.
• Evaluation instruments: No common validated questionnaire or competence assessment instrument has been identified for all implementations.
• Learning gains: Published pretest-posttest results demonstrating improvements in knowledge or competences have not been identified.
• Comparative effectiveness: No controlled comparison with conventional teaching methods has been established.
• Long-term transfer: Evidence demonstrating that participation improves subsequent professional decisions or energy-planning practice has not been identified.
• Debriefing procedures: The extent to which structured reflection was consistently incorporated into the documented sessions remains unclear.

Post-project research

In December 2024, Thierry Vilmin published a book chapter specifically discussing urbEN and the interactions between actors in a local energy system.

The chapter describes the game’s territorial setting, stakeholder roles and central objective of progressing towards energy autonomy.

This publication provides additional methodological documentation but should not be interpreted as evidence of experimentally demonstrated educational effectiveness.

Overall evaluation status

LOTUS provides strong evidence of game development, publication, testing and implementation in educational and professional contexts.

Its learning effectiveness, however, remains insufficiently documented through quantitative outcome assessments.

The project should therefore be classified as an implemented Board Game-Based Learning initiative with documented educational use but without independently demonstrated learning gains.

LOTUS produced a collection of openly accessible educational resources supporting interdisciplinary teaching and professional development in sustainable urban energy transition.

The main outputs include the urbEN educational board game, teaching curricula, European case studies and a comprehensive textbook.

1. urbEN – Urban Energy Serious Game

The project’s central BGBL resource is an original print-and-play tabletop role-playing game designed to simulate the interactions between stakeholders involved in local energy transition.

The game addresses territorial energy autonomy, renewable energy production, energy savings, infrastructure planning and stakeholder negotiation.

The project published its first publicly accessible print-and-play version on 23 November 2022.

The official project website states that the package contains the board game materials, printable components, guidance and game rules.

An updated version, v4, was published on 8 September 2024.

urbEN – Print-and-Play Urban Energy Serious Game, Version 4 (2024)

urbEN – Original Print-and-Play Publication (2022)

2. Curriculum on Urban Transition of Energy (CUTE)

The project developed an interdisciplinary teaching framework designed for higher education programmes in public administration, urban planning, architecture and energy systems engineering.

The curriculum addresses the implementation of local energy transition within social, economic, institutional and administrative contexts.

It can be used independently or in combination with the urbEN game, case studies and textbook.

LOTUS – Teaching Curricula (Zenodo)

3. Catalogue of Real Cases (CoRC)

The project compiled examples of local energy transition practices and initiatives across different European territories.

The cases address renewable energy, sustainable communities, energy infrastructure, territorial planning and administrative processes.

Examples include:

• Energy transition initiatives involving municipalities and local communities in Germany.
• Renewable energy developments and energy autonomy initiatives in France.
• Urban energy and sustainable territorial planning examples in Italy.
• Community energy projects and other European experiences with transferable educational relevance.

The catalogue provides real-world examples that can complement the fictional scenarios explored through urbEN.

LOTUS – European Case Studies and Use Cases

4. LOTUS Textbook – Locally Organized Transitions for Urban Sustainable Spaces

The project published a comprehensive interdisciplinary textbook edited by Isabella M. Lami and Elena Todella.

The 262-page publication presents theoretical and practice-oriented material on the energy transition of urban systems.

It addresses energy planning, governance, urban development and the integration of different project outputs through active learning approaches.

The textbook was published in 2022 with ISBN 978-88-85745-83-4.

LOTUS Textbook – Full Publication (Zenodo)

5. Educational Resources for Game Facilitators

The project developed learning, teaching and training activities intended to prepare university educators to act as facilitators or game masters for urbEN.

These activities were associated with the transfer of educational methods and the use of European energy transition case studies.

LOTUS – Learning, Teaching and Training Activities

6. Academic Publication on urbEN

Vilmin, T. (2024). urbEN, a Serious Game Featuring Interactions Between Actors in a Local Energy System. In H. Drewello, M. Pellegrino and T. Vilmin (Eds.), Local Energy Transitions in Europe, Lecture Notes in Energy, Vol. 89, pp. 269–277. Springer.

The chapter describes the game’s educational purpose, energy autonomy objective and stakeholder-based simulation.

Vilmin (2024) – urbEN Serious Game (Springer)

Resource availability and reuse

The official LOTUS website and the Zenodo records remain accessible as of November 2026.

The latest game archive is publicly listed for download, although its complete contents could not be independently inspected during this review.

The teaching curricula are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, while the textbook is published under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0.

Licensing conditions for the game’s latest archive should be verified separately before adaptation or redistribution.

Replicability

The combination of a public print-and-play game package, educational curriculum, case studies and theoretical resources provides a substantial foundation for replication.

However, accurate implementation requires consultation of the complete game rules, preparation instructions and any facilitator guidance included in the archive.

LOTUS is a strong example of Board Game-Based Learning because it uses a physical role-playing simulation to explore a complex real-world challenge involving multiple stakeholders, competing interests and interdependent decisions.

Its main methodological contribution is the representation of local energy transition as a socio-technical and institutional system rather than exclusively as a technological or environmental problem.

The urbEN game enables participants to experience the perspectives of different actors and examine why cooperation, negotiation and territorial coordination are essential to sustainable energy planning.

Methodological strengths

1. Central role of the tabletop game: urbEN is a substantial educational output within the LOTUS project, with a documented physical format and dedicated public repository.
2. Simulation of complex systems: The game represents interactions between energy production, consumption, territorial characteristics, public institutions and economic actors.
3. Stakeholder role-playing: Participants adopt different perspectives and engage with interests and responsibilities that may not coincide with their own.
4. Negotiation as an educational mechanism: Interaction between stakeholders is fundamental to the simulated energy transition challenge, rather than merely an optional social activity accompanying gameplay.
5. Interdependent decision-making: The game’s educational model highlights the consequences of decisions involving different actors within the same territorial system.
6. Urban-rural integration: The territorial setting introduces the complementarity between urban energy needs and the surrounding rural environment.
7. Interdisciplinary application: The simulation connects public administration, urban planning, engineering, economics and environmental management.
8. Professional relevance: The game addresses situations related to actual planning and governance challenges faced by future professionals.
9. Integration with educational resources: The curriculum, case studies and textbook provide additional material for interpreting game experiences.
10. Facilitator development: The project explicitly recognises the need to prepare educators to facilitate complex role-playing simulations.
11. Publicly available materials: The print-and-play distribution model creates opportunities for reuse and adaptation in different educational settings.
12. Documented implementation: The game has been used in university teaching, international student exchanges and professional contexts.

Methodological limitations and considerations

1. Specialised educational context: The game addresses complex issues requiring prior knowledge of energy systems, planning or institutional processes. This may limit accessibility for participants without an appropriate introduction.
2. Facilitation requirements: Multi-stakeholder negotiation games are likely to require experienced facilitators who can manage the simulation and relate outcomes to the intended learning objectives.
3. Potentially demanding preparation: The print-and-play format requires physical preparation of materials, while the educational content may require preliminary study.
4. Complex game interactions: Different participant roles and interdependent decisions may increase the difficulty of understanding the complete system during initial gameplay.
5. Limited independent evaluation: Although several implementations and testing iterations are documented, the available evidence does not demonstrate measurable improvements in participants’ competences.
6. Unclear assessment procedures: A common system for evaluating negotiation, systems thinking, stakeholder awareness or technical knowledge has not been established from the public documentation.
7. Limited debriefing evidence: The public descriptions do not confirm whether structured reflection procedures were applied consistently during all sessions.
8. Simulation simplification: The representation of real energy systems necessarily reduces technical, economic and institutional complexity. Educational conclusions should therefore distinguish simulated outcomes from actual planning decisions.
9. Transfer of learning: Experiencing stakeholder negotiation within a game does not automatically demonstrate improved professional negotiation or planning performance.

Connection with modern Board Game-Based Learning

LOTUS represents the development of a custom-designed educational tabletop game rather than the adaptation of an existing commercial board game.

However, its educational model differs from serious games that primarily attach knowledge questions to conventional board game structures.

In urbEN, stakeholder representation, negotiation and territorial planning are directly connected with the subject being taught.

The game does not simply ask participants to recall information about energy transition. It places them within a simplified system in which different actors must interact to address an energy-related challenge.

This distinction is particularly important when examining the relationship between game mechanics and learning objectives.

Role-playing and negotiation are not merely motivational additions. They constitute mechanisms through which participants can explore the difficulties of coordinating different interests in local energy transition.

The game therefore provides an example of learning through the interactions generated by a simulated system, rather than relying primarily on questions, memorisation or explicit knowledge rewards.

Implications for educational game design

LOTUS illustrates several principles that may be relevant to future BGBL initiatives:

• Represent complex educational problems through relationships between different actors and resources.
• Align game mechanics with the processes and competences that the educational activity aims to develop.
• Use differentiated roles to encourage perspective-taking and stakeholder analysis.
• Integrate competing objectives and interdependent decisions to support systems thinking.
• Provide theoretical preparation when simulations address technically demanding subjects.
• Combine gameplay with documented real-world cases to strengthen educational relevance.
• Include structured post-game reflection to connect simulated decisions with professional practice.
• Develop assessment tools capable of evaluating negotiation, collaboration and systems thinking rather than only factual knowledge.
• Document player numbers, game duration, facilitation requirements and implementation conditions to support replication.
• Evaluate learning outcomes using appropriate pretest-posttest measures, observation protocols or comparison groups.

Overall assessment

LOTUS is a highly relevant example of custom-designed tabletop simulation for interdisciplinary higher education and professional training.

Its principal strength lies in the integration of stakeholder role-playing, negotiation and territorial energy planning within a physical educational game.

The project also provides strong evidence of resource development, publicly available materials and documented implementation in several European educational contexts.

Its principal limitation concerns the absence of independently verified quantitative evidence demonstrating improvements in learning outcomes or professional competences.

For the European BGBL Observatory, LOTUS is particularly valuable as a case study illustrating how physical games can model complex socio-technical systems and support experiential exploration of sustainability challenges.