K7. The many roles of scenario modelling to achieve innovation and impact
Using scenarios can be a powerful way of fostering innovation and achieving impact through modelling. Scenarios provide a means to engage with industry and the community regarding uncertain futures and implications of alternative courses of action or assumptions about a system. Scenarios can however be used for many different purposes, with different audiences, in different contexts, and hence making use of different tools and methods. This session aims to bring together both theoretical and applied examples of the use of scenarios to help highlight the case-specific differences that are important to effective design of scenario analysis exercises.
Submissions are requested to explicitly discuss in their abstract, paper and talk:
What is the scenario(s) intended to achieve?
Who is involved in developing scenario(s), in what role?
Who is intended to use the scenario(s) developed, and why?
How do you know the scenario(s) is suitable for the intended purpose?
Possible topics include:
Theoretical advances and applications of exploratory modelling techniques, including scenario discovery
Challenges of engaging stakeholders, and developing scenarios in a participatory way
Issues and advances in communication of scenarios, including visualisation
Issues and advances in evaluation of scenarios, including treatment of uncertainty and credibility
Issues and advances in bridging scales, integrating sectors
Use of scenarios to support adaptation and building adaptive pathways
Use of scenarios in conjunction with soft systems methods or robust decision making
Use of scenarios to highlight vulnerabilities or tipping points
Creation and use of best and worst case models
Use of multiple working hypotheses and multi-model ensembles
Use of scenarios in different thematic areas, e.g. climate mitigation and adaptation, water scarcity, water-energy-food nexus
Use of scenarios regarding the future of the Murray Darling Basin
This session is also intended to help strengthen the scenario analysis community. We specially invite contributions from:
Participants in the 2014 Innovative techniques for Quantitative Scenarios in Energy and Environmental research (IQ SCENE) workshop in London (http://www.wholesem.ac.uk/iq-scene/iq-scene)
Participants in the session Accounting for Uncertainty in Decision Support by Treating Model Assumptions as Scenarios at the iEMSs2014 conference in San Diego (http://www.iemss.org/sites/iemss2014/)