Steps for Building Scenarios Proposed but use your

Steps for Building Scenarios (Proposed, but use your imagination)

0. Core team determines the purpose of the scenario-building exercise – What type of scenarios will you build? – Who will participate? – What do you hope to gain from building scenarios? This step sets the stage for the rest of the process. Once you know what you want to get out of the scenarios, this is your roadamap. You can return to this throughout the exercise to make sure you are still on the road.

Part I: Context

1. Get creative!! • Many alternative strategies for helping people be creative … see handout. Many people (especially scientists and experts) get stuck when developing scenarios. Helping participants think creatively right from the start can help keep your group from getting stuck.

2. Think about the long-term history • Presentations • Break-out groups • Group discussion Historical eras can help us think about the role change has played in making the region what it is today. It can also help illuminate the important drivers.

3. Identify the focus of your scenarios • Defining the problem: to what should the system be resilient? – Should be a set of ~3 questions. – These questions ask about the things people are really concerned about when they think about the future. Focal questions help the group decide what types of changes and problems to address in the scenarios. You will return to these repeatedly over the course of scenario development to make sure you are addressing the important questions with the set of scenarios.

4. Determine the key variables that drive the system • What are the key variables that drive the system? – Which of these drivers have trajectories that are fairly certain? – Which have uncertain trajectories? The list of drivers helps to determine how to create stories which address the focal questions. Those drivers which have uncertain trajectories should be played out differently across the scenarios.

Part II: Storylines

5. Draft storylines • We have found it useful to put a very tight time deadline on this to make sure that participants do this creatively. • Ask participants to develop stories that capture the key concerns about the future of the region. This is the first time you are drafting actual storylines. It is important to stay as creative as possible. While you may have the list of drivers and focal questions in the back of your mind, do not look at them or try to fulfill them while developing the storylines.

Part III: Compare and contrast the storylines

6. Critically assess the storylines • Compare the scenarios to one another. Do they address all the important things you thought they should? • What surprises or shocks might happen to the system? How would these happen in each of the scenarios? Would the region be equally resilient to these shocks under each of the scenarios? • Are the scenarios different enough to capture a wide range of important factors? Do they need to be more different? Developing scenarios is iterative. Now that you have a first draft, decide how to improve the storylines.

7. Assess modeling capabilities • Will you use quantitative models? – If so, which ones? Who will do the modeling? How will the quantitative results be integrated into the storylines? If you plan to use quantitative modeling, the results of these models can be used to assess the storylines.

8. Evaluate implications of the scenarios • Use qualitative and quantitative results to understand the implications of the scenarios. – How would important upcoming policy decisions be taken under each of the scenarios? Would they be more successful under some scenarios than others? – Under which scenario is the region most resilient to larger policy decisions that might be taken soon? Because the scenario development process is iterative, evaluating the scenarios will help determine whether you need to improve or change some aspects of them.

9. Communicate with a wider audience • Share what you have learned with a wider audience in any way that seems appropriate. • Take notes on what parts of the presentation work well and what don’t work so well for future presentations. Sharing the scenarios and what you learned in developing them is an important part of the scenario development process.