4.1.2.3 Predictive scenario: what will happen?
Predictive scenarios are often used by managers to anticipate the question “What...if...?”.
The predictive scenario attempts to predict the future at a given date. It is based on science and probabilities. The usefulness of such scenarios is to make possible the planning and adaptation to situations that are expected to occur. Predictive scenarios are mainly based on modelling and try to calculate the most probable evolution of a situation under certain conditions.
Predictive scenario examples
The simplest and most well-known predictive example is meteorological prediction (led by external events) knowing the present situation, the depressions and anticyclones around and there more probable behaviour known from the observation of past events leading to questions such as “what will be the meteorological events in the next 6 hours?”
Another example could be energy consumption (led by internal decisions and external events): knowing the present needs for a country and its probable development (individual and for industry) leading to questions such as “what will be the needs of energy during the next month / year?”
Sometimes different types of scenarios can be also combined. This is the case, for example for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios on climate change, which are both exploratory and predictive scenarios. If you refer to exploratory scenarios below, you will see that the example given are different scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions made from different options for the development of human activities. From these exploratory scenarios, by assuming relations between greenhouse gas concentration, the earth’s temperature and the sea level rise, predictive scenarios can be created. See below the different predictions made from the different scenarios.
Figure: [IPCC, 2007]
Activity 1: you have seen the 3 different types of scenarios. To be sure that you properly understand the difference between them, search on the internet other examples of scenarios and identify which of these 3 categories they fall into.
