Under what conditions? A scenario-based approach for exploring the prerequisites of future events

Abstract

In an increasingly complex world, futures thinking can be used to understand the conditions that define future events' realization. This paper presents a novel approach to explore under what conditions some chosen future event would occur. The approach can be seen as a fusion of exploratory scenarios with the backward-looking perspective of backcasting while resembling cross-impact methods in how future events' realization arises from the interaction of several uncertain assumptions. The approach maps the causal mechanisms and assumptions that lead to the investigated event's realization, and results in a subset of assumption combinations that lead to the event being realized or not, and scenario sets where the event is either realized or not. This analysis provides insights beyond “Is the event likely to occur?”, revealing the various circumstances under which it can occur. We also provide ways for considering probabilities and deliberate decisions within the approach. We illustrate the approach with three example cases from different problem domains, such as reaching long-term climate targets, and employing various methods, such as causal mapping, influence diagrams, and optimization. We conclude with a discussion on the approach's potential to enhance foresight practice, emphasizing its synergistic relation to existing methods and its contribution to a richer, more nuanced anticipation of the future.