Scenario Design
POLICY DECISION LAB · LABORATORY 06
Scenario
Design.
Policy must operate in futures that cannot be known precisely. Construct coherent alternative worlds, reveal critical uncertainties and identify options that perform acceptably across more than one imagined future.
OPTIMISTICTRANSFORMATIVEADVERSEBASELINE
SCENARIOS ARE NOT PREDICTIONS
Explore possibility.
Do not manufacture certainty.
A scenario is a coherent description of how important drivers and uncertainties could combine. Its purpose is to test decisions, not to claim which future will occur.
Forecast
Estimates a likely future value, often with a probability distribution or confidence interval.
Scenario
Combines multiple drivers into a plausible and internally consistent future context.
Sensitivity test
Changes one assumption or parameter to examine how a result responds.
SCENARIO CONSTRUCTION
Build futures
from critical uncertainties.
Decision focus
Define the policy choice and relevant horizon.
Drivers
Identify economic, social, technological and institutional forces.
Uncertainties
Select influential factors whose direction or scale is unknown.
Coherence
Combine drivers without internal contradiction.
Implications
Test options, warning indicators and adaptation triggers.
SCENARIO ROBUSTNESS LAB
Change the future.
Test the policy.
Adjust growth, fiscal space, technology adoption and climate stress. ECONORIA constructs four futures and scores a policy’s indicative performance in each.
SCENARIO VERDICTThe policy remains beneficial across all four futures, although performance weakens in the adverse case.
SCENARIO DISCIPLINE
Plausible, distinct
and decision-relevant.
Avoid good–bad caricatures
Every scenario should contain tensions, trade-offs and credible mechanisms.
Do not assign fake probabilities
Use probabilities only when defensible evidence supports them.
Preserve internal coherence
Economic, fiscal, technological and institutional assumptions must fit together.
Define signposts
Identify observable indicators showing which future may be emerging.
SCIENTIFIC CHECKPOINT
What makes a scenario
useful?
Which statement is most accurate?
Scenarios combine drivers into plausible decision environments.
Continue to Laboratory 7: Cost–Benefit and Cost-Effectiveness →
