New outlooks in traceability and consistency of integrated scenarios

Abstract

This paper proposes two criteria to assess and compare the quality of (integrated) scenarios, namely scenario traceability and scenario consistency. From a futures research perspective, both are identified as being central challenges to scenario quality. Traceability is a recognized standard of scenario communication but difficult to achieve in practice. Consistency, simultaneously a construction principle and a constitutive element of scenarios, is not easy to accomplish either. Integrated scenario methodologies, i.e., those approaches combining, e.g., ‘story and simulation’ (SAS), are especially challenged by both issues. In this paper, scenario traceability and scenario consistency are more precisely defined and operationalized to allow for qualitative measurement, assessment and comparisons of different (integrated) scenario methodologies and their resulting socio-environmental scenarios. The criteria are applied empirically to new forms of integrated scenario methodologies. They serve to analyze two explorative case studies combining the systematic yet qualitative cross-impact balance analysis (CIB) with simulation. The criteria allow illuminating whether and on what dimensions and levels these new forms of integrated scenario methodologies do (or do not) support scenario consistency and scenario traceability. The empirical analysis shows that new integrated scenario methodologies combining CIB with numerical simulation present some new answers to the traceability and consistency challenges of classical SAS approaches. The application suggests that the two criteria are appropriate and useful for assessing scenario quality from an academic perspective. Still, further research is needed to understand the relation of traceability and consistency to additional quality criteria that influence the practical usefulness of scenarios from a policy advice-oriented perspective.