Games for Health in Transportation Systems

Transportation systems design might be supported by participatory approaches refining service design, user experiences, and safety research. The evaluation of mobility alternatives as design improvement strategies requires more advanced instructional techniques with new structures of complexity that can demonstrate, analyze, or compare system performances in order to achieve environmental sustainability in general and the well-being of the end-users in particular. As an emerging technology, games are capable of representing operations and management of passenger freight transportation and increase situational awareness of capacity bottlenecks. However, few research efforts have been devoted to the synthesis of the research progress. Based on the profiling methodology that has been previously employed in retrospect of healthcare simulations, this article presents a bibliometric review of games for health in transportation systems. The study carries out a literature analysis of the modelling methods to assemble gamified scenarios from a planning and managerial perspective. The Web of Science Core Collections are used to identify research items and investigate all the game-based studies in the cross-disciplinary research area of transportation and public health. The technology, game mechanism, and the health-related issue addressed are grouped into broad categories. The research findings are three-fold. (1) The majority of publications are classified into research efforts revolving around slow and road transportation modes. (2) Although scores, badges, and challenges are considered as the frequently seen gamification features, environmental simulation, avatars, and narratives appear as game mechanisms for the activation of the individual decision-making process. (3) Introducing system dynamics, human-computer interaction design, and a stakeholder accountability framework into the multi-stakeholder simulation setting leverages gaming outcomes with health benefits amid transportation system end-users. The literature study concludes with an integrated framework summarizing the best design practices between 2002 and 2022 on how the lessons learned from serious gameplay in virtual environments could translate into real mobility improvements. A selection of future research questions is curated to envisage new links between transportation and health research communities.