Methods in PRA II: Scenario Building & Alternate Futures Flashcards
What are the key characteristics of scenarios and scenario-building?
- Scenarios assume that there are multiple futures and seek to predict them through ‘indicators’.
- Scenarios are political in that they make futures an actionable present, create an economy and delegate responsibility/ accountability - also political tools as they include and exclude particular futures.
- Premediation is the act of mediating the imagined future in the present and rehearse it to prepare - link to governmentality lecture: calculated vs. precautionary risks - no end to the amount of futures you can rehearse.
What are scenarios used for?
Scenarios are used as predictive tools for various things/topics/reasons, in combination and through various methods - they can be normative as well.
What is the classic scenario model?
Shell scenario planning model, is most often used. This can create coherent narratives about alternate futures and show trends.
What is a ‘trend’ in scenario planning?
Internal (to the scenario) forces that produce change. It is difficult to determine what are drivers and what are trends.
What is a ‘driver’ in scenario planning?
External forces that shape the environment in which the scenario plays out. It is difficult to determine what are drivers and what are trends.
What are ‘discontinuities’ in scenario planning?
Radical shifts or ruptures that will significantly alter the way the scenario plays out.
What are ‘indicators’ in scenario planning?
Particular points in time where something changes, which you will monitor and make decisions from (change scenario).
What are the conditions necessary for scenarios to ‘work’?
- Consistency: no contradiction.
- Causality: needs to be clear causality.
- Logic: need to be logically connected - no paradoxes within a scenario.
Are the required conditions of scenarios an unbreakable rule?
No. Sometimes the future is so uncertain that you have to relax the requirements, especially when uncertainty requires imagining paradoxical, inconsistent or counter-trend futures. High turbulence - imagine the unimaginable. ‘Back-casting’ came out of this notion of uncertainty. This uncertainty also has a dramatic impact on how people produce knowledge about the future.
What are 5 examples of scenario building?
- Shell scenario planning model
- Intuitive knowledge model
- War games
- Stress tests
- Crisis drills
What does the Intuitive knowledge model entail?
Impact vs. probability schema - steps to be followed in listed order:
- Define the issue
- Identify trends/forces that influence the issue
- Identify drivers in larger environment
- Rank trends and drivers by probability and impact
- Cluster in scenarios
- Assess implications of scenarios
- Identify indicators
What is a war game?
Armed forces/ military training based on scenarios. They ‘play’ war.
What is political about scenario analysis?
- Decision-making.
- Economy.
- Responsibility (scenarios make someone responsible for something that is imagined).
What role does imagination play in scenario analysis?
When precaution meets scenario analysis - imagination.
- Responsibility and economy
- Almost physically impossible to imagine something that you have not somehow seen or experienced before. Essentially the role of imagination is to determine the best and worst case scenarios (and everything in between) irrespective of probability.
How does the precautionary principle fit in with scenario analysis?
The precautionary principle emerged in policy and not academia - scenarios deal with uncertainties beyond calculable risk - back to differences between precautionary risk logic and insurance risk logic (economic approach topics).
