Scenario
Scenario: a narrative about a related sequence of events which identifies exogenous factors determining which events occur and also how some of these events cause or modify the nature of subsequent events.
A Scenario is in general a textual description (narrative, unstructured or structured text) of a perceived view or understanding of a topic under discussion. A scenario may cover an existing world status, a future vision or even some fiction.
Scenarios are either mental models of stakeholders or an output of simulations.
Some features a scenario can possess:
- Different stakeholders may develop different sets of scenarios independently (reflecting e.g. different mental models in scenario sets of different groups).
- Scenarios may be conflicting among different stakeholder groups.
- Alternative scenarios describe different aspects and /or alternatives of the (policy) context under consideration.
- Scenarios may relate to one another, for example,
- a scenario can extend and therewith advance an existing scenario
- a scenario may be nested in another scenario, i.e. describe a particular aspect of a scenario in more detail through a separate (nested) scenario.
Three types of scenarios are distinguished in OCOPOMO, differing by stakeholders and time when it was generated along the OCOPOMO policy development process:
- Initial scenario – provided
by a facilitator and the policy owner(s) in phase 1 of the process to stimulate the subsequent discussion and generation of alternative scenarios (in phase 2).
- Evidence-based scenario - also called user generated
scenario – collaboratively developed scenarios by stakeholders who communicate
their opinions, views and expectations in a set of scenarios.
- Model generated scenario – computed as a result of running a simulation of a policy model. It is produced as a text-based transcription of a simulation run.
"A scenario is an internally consistent and coherent sketch
(archetypal image) of the future visions of
eGovernment[+]
, which may not be approximated from current developments (scenarios are not trends!). A scenario consists of a set of
issue[+]
s and associated consequences (a number of topics of interest and
dimension[+]
s).
Note: Scenarios may, nevertheless, often be impacted by
interpretations and approximations of current realities."[1]
[1] http://www.egovrtd2020.org/navigation/work_packages/wp2_scenario_building/