16 February — Designing and using qualitative scenarios to address climate change and other complex problems in science, technology and public policy

Date: 16 February 2021
Time: 12:00pm EST
Location: via Zoom
Speaker: Dr. Vanessa Schweizer
Topic: Designing and using qualitative scenarios to address climate change and other complex problems in science, technology and public policy.

Abstract:  Scenarios are a particular approach for exploring possible futures to inform near-term decisions. For the purpose of understanding the implications of policy interventions compared to the status quo, scenarios include quantitative projections of alternative futures as well as plausible narratives. This talk focuses on the latter (i.e. scenario narratives, or qualitative scenarios) and how they are designed and used. Narratives depict plausible combinations of assumptions for quantitative simulation; however, qualitative scenarios can also be the outputs of modeling difficult-to-quantify systems (e.g. socio-cultural evolution). For both uses of qualitative scenarios — either specifying modeling inputs or being the product of modeling outputs — systematic approaches for qualitative scenario development should be used, especially for decision support. This talk will provide an overview of recent and ongoing work on systematically constructed qualitative socio-economic scenarios for climate change research as well as sustainable development.