Policy support tool
Scenario Planning
Scenario planning is a tool for exploring possible, probable and/or preferable futures. Identifying strategies or options that are robust to a range of possible scenarios is also key in scenario planning. Scenario planning typically takes place in a workshop setting, in which participants explore current trends, drivers of change and key uncertainties, and how these factors might interact to influence the future. To do so, they draw on both qualitative and quantitative information, including datasets, spatially-explicit data and expert/stakeholder judgment, and based on this information, a set of plausible future scenarios is developed.
The focus of scenario planning is to explore possible futures that may arise under different conditions and what those different futures might mean for current decisions. Assumptions about future events or trends are questioned, and uncertainties are made explicit.