https://cspo.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/read_Bradfield-Origins-and-Evolution-of-Scenerio-Techniques.pdf

The origins and evolution of scenario techniques in long range business planning

Essence of backcasting

With increasing frequency and growing vehemence, we are being told that on our “only one earth” we are, for the first time, living a single history. By this is meant that technological, ecological, political, economic, and social environments are becoming so globally enmeshed that changes taking place in one segment of international society will have consequential repercussions in all others. An equally frequent and no less vehement remonstration attending this observation is that the scope and complexity of new scientific and technological developments are outpacing the capacities of our systems of international organization to manage them. The necessity has emerged, this line of reasoning continues, to restructure our international institutional frameworks in keeping with the unhitching of nature's constants which science and technology have effected. But on what basis? According to what principles? Toward what ends?

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0020818300031696

International responses to technology: Concepts and trends

Climate impact assessment needs to take account of two interrelated processes: socio-economic change and climate change. To date, future change in socio-economic systems has not been sufficiently integrated with an analysis of climate change impacts. Participative and synthetic scenario approaches offer a means for dealing with critical issues of indeterminacy, innovation, reflexivity and framing in analysing change in socio-economic systems, paving the way for a coherent way of handling of socio-economic futures in impact assessment. We argue that scenarios represent heuristic tools that encourage social learning in climate impact assessment. The advantages and disadvantages of a scenario-based approach are explored using examples from regional climate impact assessment in the UK.

Socio-economic futures in climate change impact assessment: using scenarios as ‘learning machines’

Purpose – This paper addresses a challenging topic, which in both academic and professional literatures has been widely discussed but mainly from one single angle – that is, how to select foresight methods. From that point of view researchers and consultants promote (even if unintentionally) the use of particular methods. Here the question of selection is raised from a different perspective: how are foresight methods selected?Design/methodology/approach – The guiding “theory” is that a better understanding of the fundamental attributes of foresight methods and their linkages to the core phases of a foresight process, together with the identification of possible patterns in the selection of methods, will provide useful insights as to how the selection of methods is carried out.Findings – So far the selection of foresight methods has been dominated by the intuition, insight, impulsiveness and – sometimes – inexperience or irresponsibility of practitioners and organisers. This paper reveals that the selectio...

Theodore J. Gross

Papers

The Art of Conjecture.