Exploratory Scenario Planning

Introduction

Exploratory scenario planning (XSP) is an engagement tool and planning method that allows communities to prepare for uncertain futures. Through an XSP process, planners use best-available evidence to map out multiple plausible futures (i.e., scenarios) that are then used to engage stakeholders about plans and policies. Exploratory scenario planning embraces uncertainty, with the ultimate goal of identifying robust policies that will help a community to thrive under multiple different conditions and circumstances.

How Does Scenario Planning Differ From Traditional Planning?

Traditional planning processes follow the “predict-and-plan” model, meaning that planners engage stakeholders around a single, preferred future and then develop plans and recommendations accordingly. Exploratory scenario planning, on the other hand, identifies multiple plausible futures and plans for all of them. Advocates of scenario planning argue that communities who plan for multiple futures are more resilient to changing conditions and uncertain outcomes.

How It Works

Exploratory scenario planning is a flexible tool that can guide the creation of whole plans or be used within planning processes to explore particular topics. In general, XSP processes begin with the development of qualitative scenarios that describe some plausible future conditions for a community. The scenarios are developed through group and stakeholder discussions of key future uncertainties and planning analysis. For example, if a community’s stakeholders identify population change as a key uncertainty, the scenarios would describe a plausible range of population changes under different future conditions. These scenarios - plausible descriptions of a community’s future under conditions of uncertainty, like population change - are then used to engage the public to develop plan policies and strategies.

This tool profile describes a basic approach for using exploratory scenario planning, drawing on guidance from the Sonoran Institute, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy and the American Planning Association. We describe a 9-step XSP process that your jurisdiction can use to accomplish its hazards planning goals; for detailed instructions on each step, see How To Use Exploratory Scenario Planning and the accompanying set of instructional videos. Throughout the tool, we illustrate the concept using a simplified example of Lark Bunting, a fictitious town in Colorado.

The 9-Step XSP Process: Video Introductions and Examples

These Sonoran Institute videos illustrate the XSP process, step-by-step, with reference to real-world examples:

Step 1: Develop a Focal Question

Step 2: Brainstorm Driving Forces

Steps 3 and 4: Ranking Driving Forces and Identifying Key Uncertainties

Step 5: Create Scenario Matrices

Step 6: Scenario Narratives

Steps 7 and 8: Explore Implications and Create a Path of Action

Step 9: ID Robust Strategies

The Sonoran Institute recommends a 9-step XSP process that will typically unfold over a 6-12 month period. The XSP process includes a core planning team, an advisory group, and the public:

The core project team include “the sponsoring agency, department, or organization; senior planners; and a formal XSP facilitator.” The core planning team manages the overall process and does much of the “behind-the-scenes” work that advances the scenario planning along the steps described below.
The advisory group is made up of representatives from different stakeholder groups that participates in strategic steps in the scenario building process, especially when their specialized knowledge or professional experience is needed.
Public involvement can occur at any stage in the process. In small communities, the public might be a key stakeholder group. In other instances, the public might be invited to the project workshops.

The 9-step process is typically organized into 2 workshops, with significant work by the core project team and advisory group in-between:

The fictitious town of Lark Bunting, Colorado is updating their comprehensive plan. Natural hazards are an important challenge for Lark Bunting; the community is at-risk from flooding, which is likely to become more frequent and severe due to climate change. Lark Bunting is using exploratory scenario planning as a tool to help with the natural hazards element of their comprehensive plan.

Lark Bunting is a small town of approximately 2,000 people, with a volunteer government and limited staff capacity. Lark Bunting brought on a planning consultant to guide the overall process. For the hazards element, the planning stakeholders involved in the process are:

The town’s core project team includes the consultant team, the town manager, and the chair of the town’s planning commission.
The advisory group includes individuals with a broader range of knowledge about the community. It includes representatives from different town departments, the county emergency manager, chairs of the town boards and commissions, representatives from several local organizations, and a representative from the Department of Local Affairs.
The public will be invited to participate in the community workshops, with an emphasis on workshop 2 where key policies and strategies for the community are identified.

Step One: Develop a Focal Question

A focal question encompasses the challenges or issues that your community will address through the scenario planning process. Crucially, the focal question defines the boundaries of the planning process. Since the focal question will guide the remainder of the planning process, the core project team will typically spend significant time developing and refining this question, ahead of its first planning workshop.

The core project team and advisory group begin the hazard element planning process by identifying the focal question that will drive it; “how can Lark Bunting thrive in spite of a changing environment”?

Step Two: Brainstorm Driving Forces

Driving forces are “occurrences that push forward trends.” In this step, your community should discuss the challenge described in the focal question and what driving forces are likely behind it. The number of driving forces that you identify will depend on the size and scope of the planning process, but it is useful at this stage to list them and clearly explain their connection to the focal question.

The two key issues identified in Lark Bunting’s focal question are thriving and environmental change, in the context of flood hazards During the community’s first workshop, participants discussed and listed driving forces behind these issues and their connection to the focal question:

Population change: The shift in population numbers and composition is a major driver and determinant of the community’s thriving.
Housing prices: the rising cost of housing poses a significant barrier to low- and moderate-income residents, and especially young families.
Flooding: flood hazards can cost lives and cause severe disruption to Lark Bunting’s economy and infrastructure.
Land availability: Lark Bunting is surrounded on several sides by state- and national forest, and has limited areas where it can growth to accommodate new population.

Steps Three and Four: Mapping Future Possibilities

In these next steps, you will map your driving forces (from step 2) according to their (un)certainty and importance. The Sonoran Institute recommends that the planning team and workshop participants create a simple 2x2 matrix and that they place the driving forces on the matrix according to how important they are, and how uncertain they are.

The participants then compile two lists: critical certainties and critical uncertainties, with the most important driving forces listed first for each list.

The workshop participants discussed the driving forces described earlier, in-terms of their importance and (un)certainty:

Population change: Like many Colorado communities, Lark Bunting expects that population pressures will continue to drive population growth in the town and region.
Housing prices: Workshop participants agreed that the price of housing is likely to continue to increase, even if the state and country experience another housing crisis like it did in 2007-2008. The rate of increase, however, is less certain.
Flooding: Lark Bunting has suffered a number of past flood events that have caused damage and displacement. Upstream development and the effects of climate change make the risk from future flooding uncertain.
Land availability: The availability of developable land is an important constraint on housing and business development in Lark Bunting. Since the town is effectively “surrounded” by public land, it will very likely continue to be a scarce resource into the future.

The discussions led to the creation of the following 2x2 diagram of driving forces:

Step Five: Create scenario matrices

In this step you will use your list of critical uncertainties to create a series of scenario matrices that plot critical uncertainties against one another.

The Sonoran Institute’s video on creating scenario matrices is an important visual guide to this process.

First, create an axis for each uncertainty with the plausible end-states defined. If your uncertainty is “economic health,” for example, your plausible end states might be “volatile, stagnant” and “healthy, stable”. You should do this for each of the critical uncertainties on your list above. Next, plot these uncertainties together in groups of two, creating a 2x2 graph for each potential combination and each with four potential outcomes characterized, until all the combinations of uncertainty axes have been defined.

In this simplified example, Lark Bunting has identified 2 critical uncertainties about its future thriving and environmental resilience: population growth and flooding. This leads to the following scenario matrix:

Step Six: Develop scenario narratives

The next step is for the core project team and advisory group to use these graphs to write scenario narratives that compellingly describe the multiple, plausible futures for the community. For most planning processes, the project team will choose one of the scenario matrices to develop into scenario narratives and use those for the remainder of the planning process.

The first step is to look at the critical certainties you identified in step 4, and write a “common to all” scenario narrative that will apply to any potential scenarios. The benefit of this is to identify the “actors and conditions likely to be found in any of the uncertain futures being explored.” See the Lark Bunting example below. Next, for your selected matrix, look at each quadrant of the matrix and write a narrative that will help inspire critical thinking and engagement by community stakeholders. As the Sonoran video describes, these narratives should be valid (grounded in real data), relevant (should reflect the realities described in your community profile), concise, and accessible to a multi-stakeholder audience. Most important, these scenarios are an opportunity to tell the story of your community’s plausible futures.

After creating their scenario matrices, the project team spends time developing detailed scenarios that incorporate the best available data on population growth and change, town development, and flood hazards. The following are brief outlines of the types of information that fully-fleshed out narratives would include:

Resilient growth: In this scenario, the population of Lark Bunting grows steadily, in-line with the population projections for the state. The growth has numerous implications, like increases in local tax revenue and growing demand for infrastructure and public services. The incidence of flood hazards stays the same or decreases with flood mitigation investments.

Safe and shrinking: This scenario is the same as resilient growth, except that the population of the town declines over the comprehensive planning period. Further, the population demographics of the town shift, as the remaining population grows older and has fewer children. The decline in population leads to a shrinking town budget.

Growing risk: In this scenario the population of Lark Bunting increases, as does the incidence of flood hazards due to climate change and intensifying growth in upstream communities. As a result, the town will face significant development pressures as well as intensifying risk to flood hazards. The town will also see increased revenue streams from development activity and population growth, however.

Shrinking and flooded: In this final scenario, Lark Bunting’s population declines as the incidence of flood hazards increases.

Steps Seven and Eight: Explore implications and create a path of action

Now that you have your common-to-all narrative and four scenario narratives, you should work to identify a few implications of each narrative. Make sure you focus on identifying “what should be addressed?” in the narrative. After you have this list, you should identify a strategy or strategies for dealing with each implication.

Create a table of implications and strategies for each scenario narrative.

During the second planning workshop, the core project team and advisory group engage the public and other key stakeholders using the scenarios described above. The goal of these sessions is to identity actions that the community can take during the period of the comprehensive plan to best thrive under different environmental and population conditions:

Resilient growth: With high growth and limited change to the frequency or size of flood hazards, Lark Bunting can be vigilant to keep the risk to life and property low by continuing to practice good floodplain management practices and guiding (re)development towards safer areas outside of the floodplain. The town can also use some of the expected revenue increase to encourage densification in flood safe areas and to educate the public about preparing for potential flood disasters.

Safe and shrinking: As Lark Bunting steadily loses population, it should recognize that a flood disaster could accelerate negative population and economic trends. The town should use its limited resources to prevent development pressures in the regulatory floodplain, instead concentrating any (re)development activity that does happen to business and residential areas outside.

Growing risk: In this scenario, Lark Bunting will face extreme pressures on housing and commercial development, along with increasing amounts of flood disasters. It is essential that the town strengthen its floodplain management program, in-order to restrict development in flood-prone areas and ensure that new development be done in the most resilient way possible. Given the growth pressures the town will face, and the limited land it has available for development, it should work to incentivize growth outside of the floodplain by increasing density in those areas and taking advantage of infill opportunities. The town should take advantage of external resources, like FEMA grants, to invest in local mitigation. It will also be important to continually educate the public about the dangers from flood hazards, as new growth means new generations of residents who might not be aware of the risk.

Shrinking and flooded: Given the increase incidence of flood events, and likely declining local resources due to population decline, Clark Bunting will need to invest in floodplain management and hazard mitigation efforts to reduce the impacts of future flood events. This will likely require the town to leverage external grants and resources, like FEMA programs to acquire property in flood-prone areas. Given that the town’s population will also be aging, it will be important to promote awareness and preparation for flood events, among the local government staff and the public.

Step Nine: ID robust strategies

Finally, you should identify robust strategies by comparing the list of strategies in step 8 of the process. Which strategies are common across all scenario narratives? Which are common across 3 scenario narratives, or fewer?

Ultimately, identifying strategies that will robustly perform across a range of plausible futures is the goal of the scenario planning process. If a strategy was identified for all four scenarios that your process produced, it is therefore robust because it is useful even across uncertain future conditions. It is important to note that even some scenario-specific strategies may prove useful in the future, if your community is moving towards that likely future. While these strategies may not be the preferred path of action at the time of the plan’s creation, because of their limited use, they can be referred to later should conditions trend towards that scenario.

There were several robust strategies that were relevant across three or four scenarios in Clark Bunting. The first, and most applicable across all scenarios, is investing in improved floodplain management, which will reduce losses from future disasters. Promoting density and growth outside of the floodplain through incentives is another strategy that is robust across multiple scenarios. Finally, the town will likely want to pursue external grants and resources to help achieve its goals, and to educate the public about the dangers from flood hazards.

Where It’s Been Done

The City of Fort Collins used exploratory scenario planning to help guide their Municipal Sustainability and Adaptation Plan, which was adopted in 2019. The City’s focal question was, “how can the City of Fort Collins best manage its resources and adapt its systems to improve performance as a sustainable organization despite uncertainty and the impacts of climate change?” Over two workshops, the project managers guided participants and stakeholders to identify driving forces, brainstorm critical certainties and uncertainties, develop a scenario matrix, and identify robust strategies. While the Fort Collins planning process was not exclusively focused on natural hazards, they were a major element of the discussion. For example, some of the driving forces identified by the participants were natural disasters, water scarcity, and the capacity of local infrastructure.

The City and County of Denver used an exploratory scenario planning process as part of Denveright, an update to the city’s comprehensive plan. The City and County of Denver used the process internally and among the city’s planning team, consultant group, and task force chairs, prior to engaging the public. The Denveright process was a broad and overarching planning effort, but one of the critical certainties identified by the scenario planning group was increased climate variability and periods of extreme weather.

Advantages and Key Talking Points

Scenario planning helps plan for multiple plausible environmental futures that are beyond the control of local government
Exploratory scenario planning can be tailored to fit into different planning processes
Using scenario planning produces plan recommendations that are more durable across different future conditions
Builds community resilience by engaging the public around multiple hazards scenarios
Scenario planning is a different form of engagement that appeals to stakeholders and the public, which can improve the planning process overall

Challenges

Exploratory scenario planning is an emerging engagement tool and will likely require some some additional explanation and guidance
Developing evidence-based scenarios can take more time and staff resources compared to other engagement methods