シナリオの作成支援手法の現状と課題

<p>Objective. Scenario building has widely been used to help make decisions in an uncertain world. Nowadays it is often applied to sustainability issues, such as the IPCC’s greenhouse gas emissions scenarios, aiming to delineate possible images of, and pathways to, a sustainable society. Many researchers have developed methods and tools for scenario building activities. However, few papers have discussed research agendas regarding the support of scenario building. Based on a literature review of existing studies, this paper aims to clarify requisites and challenges for supporting scenario building, especially in the context of sustainability issues. </p><p>Results and Discussion. A scenario is, in general, created through iterative cycles composed of three steps; i. e.,（a）idea generation,（b）idea integration and scenario description, and（c）scenario evaluation. Focused on existing scenarios dealing with sustainability issues, quantitative simulations are often used to underpin scenario descriptions. Given a scenario is used as a means of generating and communicating ideas by involving multiple participants, the paper identifies requirements for helping the participants undertake the steps（a）-（c）for scenario building. The requirements here include:（i）to represent a scenario in a way that allows for a common understanding among the participants,（ii）to provide methods and tools for executing the processes of the steps（a）-（c）, and（iii）to make existing scenarios and their associated simulators reusable in order to encourage developing new scenarios. The results of our literature review show that a number of methods and tools are available to support some parts of the three steps（a）-（c）. Nevertheless, there are several challenges remaining to approach research tasks（i）-（iii）. As a trial toward a holistic support of scenario building, a brief introduction is given regarding Sustainable Society Scenario（3S）Simulator, which is a system developed by the authors to help scenario designers create and analyze scenarios. 3S Simulator enables to clarify the logical structure of scenarios for a better understanding, and accumulate various scenarios and simulators with the aim to promote the development and what-if analysis of new scenarios. </p><p>Conclusions. The paper reviews existing studies relevant to the support of scenario building. Although many useful methods and tools exist, there are research issues to be further addressed in supporting scenario building. For example, it is needed to ensure the transparency of the underlying logics of scenarios to facilitate communication among participants involved. In addition, the accumulation of knowledge should be promoted in the form of scenarios and simulators, while many researchers in the LCA community are engaged in developing a variety of quantitative simulation models, such as material flow models and input-output models.</p>