Scenario Building Research Articles

Development of a Systems Model for Assessing Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable, and Profitable Agriculture in New Zealand

There is a clear research gap in understanding how future pathways and disruptions to the New Zealand (NZ) agricultural system will have an impact on the environment and productivity. Agriculture is in a period of significant change due to market disruptions, climate change, increasingly stringent environmental regulations, and emerging technologies. In NZ, agriculture is a key sector of the economy, therefore government and industry need to develop policies and strategies to respond to the risks and opportunities associated with these disruptors. To address this gap, there is a need to develop an assessment tool to explore pathways and interventions for increasing agricultural profitability, resilience, and sustainability over the next 5–30 years. A decision support tool was developed through Stella Architect, bringing together production, market values, land use, water use, energy, fertiliser consumption, and emissions from agricultural sectors (dairy, beef, sheep, cereals, horticulture, and forests). The parameters are customisable by the user for scenario building. Two future trend scenarios (Business as usual, Optimisation and technology) and two breakaway scenarios (Carbon farming, Reduction in dairy demand) were simulated and all met carbon emissions goals, but profitability differed. Future environmental regulations can be met by adjusting levers associated with technology, carbon offsets, and land use. The model supports the development and assessment of pathways to achieve NZ’s national agriculture goals and has the potential to be scaled globally.

Cost-effective maintenance of safety and security barriers in the chemical process industries via genetic algorithm

Chemical plants face safety hazards and security threats that may induce catastrophic scenarios. Safety and security barriers are employed widely to protect chemical plants from accidental and intentional undesired events and mitigate consequences. Managing safety and security barriers effectively and economically is a research topic with practical significance. The analysis of undesired event scenarios, including both accidental and intentional adverse scenarios, and assessing associated safety and security barriers are critical regarding cost-efficient barrier maintenance. This study proposes a novel approach for optimizing safety and security barrier maintenance strategy considering economic constraints. This approach consists of three steps: scenario building and barrier identification, barrier modeling, and determining optimal barrier maintenance intervals. In the proposed approach, accident scenarios in terms of safety and physical security are constructed using the extended bow-tie diagrams. After associated safety and security barriers are identified, a system simulation model is developed to conduct barrier modeling based on MATLAB/Simulink simulations, in which the barrier maintenance, the impacts of human and organizational barriers, and the correlations between barriers caused by shared components are considered. Finally, a combination of cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) and genetic algorithm (GA) is employed to support the decision-making on barrier maintenance optimization. An illustrative case is employed in this study to validate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Methods for assessing climate uncertainty in energy system models — A systematic literature review

Due to anthropological climate change, climate scientists project a significant change in climate in the coming years. Despite the advances in climate modeling, future climate is still subject to large uncertainties. To mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and slow down climate change, the energy system must undergo a fundamental transition. Thereby, energy system modeling tools are used to optimize the design of future energy systems. As many components of an energy system depend on climate variables, changing climate and its uncertainties influence the outcome of energy system models. Energy systems with high shares of renewable energies are thereby especially vulnerable to changing climate conditions. To find how the changing climate and its uncertainties are assessed in energy system modeling, a systematic literature review was conducted. Thereby we address three major issues: First, we depict the most common techniques to convert climate data into energy system input data. As large amounts of climate data are necessary to depict future climate developments, we secondly review data reduction techniques which can be used to restrain computational time. Around 46% of the studies in this review use those techniques with scenario building being the most common one. Finally, we review methods to explicitly assess climate uncertainty in energy system models. The majority of energy system optimization models searches for individual solutions for the scenarios, while only 22% use methods that include the uncertainty explicitly in the optimization process. We see the need for further research especially in the use of more advanced optimization methods and the combination of those with well known data reduction techniques. The review provides a wide synopsis of different methods for the three major issues and can therefore enable energy system modelers to choose the right methods for the specific challenges.

Innovation in Smart Ports: Future Directions of Digitalization in Container Ports

New digital Industry 4.0 solutions and smart applications are being adopted in many industries, also in the most advanced ports in the world. Still, it is not clear in which directions digitalization in ports will develop in the future. Building on the research literature and the state-of-the-art in major container ports, this research characterizes smart ports and Port 4.0 with three key focus areas: automation, sustainability and collaboration. Following the scenario building theory, this article constructs four alternative scenarios for future smart ports and shows the ways in which these alternative scenarios will lead to different prioritization of digital innovations between automation, sustainable development and cooperation issues. This will have a big impact on what digitalization in ports will be like in the future.

Advancing the potential impact of future scenarios by integrating psychological principles

Engaging with the future to make better decisions in the present is key for sustainable development and climate change responses. In this conceptual paper, we suggest a scenario building approach that connects psychological principles of future thinking with future scenario development in order to advance the impact of scenarios. Future scenario work currently does not sufficiently consider processes of human communication, emotion, cognition and has only begun to focus on people’s local contexts in recent years. We argue that more understanding of psychological processes, such as cognitive biases and heuristics, as well as psychological distance, which typically occur in future thinking, can improve the impact of scenarios. Specifically, we provide a psychological basis for systematically integrating emotion-evoking aspects into future scenario development, using tailored narratives and visuals to make content tangible and meaningful for a broad spectrum of audiences, and adapting content temporally, spatially, and linguistically to audiences, in combination with inclusive and creative co-creation of scenarios and sustainable solutions. We explain why this approach has the potential to overcome some recognised cognitive biases hampering scenario impact and intended sustainable change processes, and can therefore support the co-development of sustainable and inclusive policies and solutions that empower and connect individuals, communities, and decision makers.

Analysis of business models for delivering energy efficiency through smart energy services to the European commercial rented sector

In this paper, we perform a comparative analysis of business models used by Energy Service Companies (ESCOs), suitable for the deployment of energy efficiency measures in the commercial rented sector across Europe. These models can effectively contribute to solving the split-incentive issue that arises in the rented building scenario. Some of them are obtained from their “traditional” counterparts, which do not consider the rented scenario, but just a bipartite agreement between an Energy Service Company and its client. The EU Horizon 2020 project SmartSPIN (Smart energy services to solve the SPlit INcentive problem in the commercial rented sector) targets delivery of enhanced energy services for commercial rented sector. These enhanced energy services (a) combine demand management services and energy efficiency interventions, (b) facilitate the adoption of renewables, (c) optimize the balance between demand and supply, (d) alleviate the split incentive issue. The pilot implementation of project will be performed in a business park in Greece, in an office building in Ireland and in two shopping centers in Spain. Key recommendations toward the implementation of such a smart energy service are provided in this paper. They have been obtained from a detailed analysis of ten interviews of key stakeholders of the energy efficiency section and of the commercial rented sector, along with an analysis of a selection of the most relevant technical literature.

Futures labs: a space for pedagogies of responsible innovation

ABSTRACT Lab spaces can teach STEM ethics by highlighting and creating opportunities to practice the four key dimensions of the AIRR framework of Responsible Innovation (RI): anticipation, inclusion, responsiveness, and reflexivity. In this paper, we introduce ‘Futures Labs’∼ as a pedagogical approach to train students in RI skills and encourage them to become aware of, and more concerned about, the broad social, political, ethical, and environmental dimensions of innovation. Our approach additionally trains students in a wide range of explicitly employable capacities (such as scenario building, foresight, communication, and collaboration skills). We conceive of the Futures Lab as a part of a broader permeation of RI-oriented educational practices within STEM institutions. Through practical experience in Futures Labs, students learn not only how to apply RI frameworks, but also get a feel for why doing so matters. The paper concludes with a practically-oriented discussion of exercises employed at each institution's Futures Lab.

A Holistic Approach to Strategic Sustainable Development of Urban Voids as Historic Urban Landscapes from the Perspective of Urban Resilience

Since complex urban systems are a combination of different spatial typologies and may have various complex characteristics (human, environmental, social, economic, political, and cultural), decision-making cannot be done without a holistic approach and complex analysis and evaluation of the possible development scenarios. This is especially true in today’s world, where spatial and urban planning must consider various objectives such as sustainable development, accessibility, landscape characteristics, and public interests on a strategic level. This results in the need to use appropriate decision support and decision-making tools in the strategic urban planning process of complex urban environments with Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL) characteristics to improve urban development and resilience. The proposed evaluation model, “Strategic Planning for Urban Resilience—SPUR model,” is based on a holistic approach to spatial planning with an emphasis on the strategic sustainable development of urban voids as HULs and was tested on the case study of the Delta area in the City of Rijeka, Croatia. The proposed holistic approach can help in scenario building, evaluation, and selection of planning alternatives, as well as decision-making processes in urban management, by enabling the evaluation and control of complex scenarios from a sustainable development perspective.

Offshore grid topology optimisation with a geographical information system

A novel methodology is investigated to identify and optimise large scale offshore grid topologies connecting multiple wind farms and countries with each other. A Geographical Information System (GIS) is setup to cluster wind farms and create a permissive graph topology. Its purpose is to propose grid layouts with potential hub locations and landing points bottom-up in a fully analytical toolchain, while avoiding manual scenario building. A coupled market model performs the investment optimisation into new lines on the GIS created graph. This two-step procedure is demonstrated at the example of the Baltic Sea Region for the target year 2040. It can be found, that future offshore topologies benefit from bundled transmission paths and many clustered wind farms. A sensitivity analysis reveals that the topology results are sensitive for wind farm location assumptions and pre-defined interconnectors or hubs. Not least, the capability of the onshore grid to integrate the influx of offshore wind power and the level of detail it is modelled in, directly reflects on the topology results for the offshore grid. It is concluded that optimising the future offshore grid is a quest of pan-European scale which benefits heavily from geo data based pre-processing in a GIS.

Climate benefits of wooden construction in urban context

Wooden construction materials have two climate benefits compared to non-wooden options: lower lifecycle emissions and a carbon storage potential. This study estimates the implications of replacing concrete buildings with wooden ones for a period of 35 years in Helsinki metropolitan area, Finland. The study has three main steps. First, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions difference between concrete and wooden buildings is estimated. Next, we select the most accurate carbon storage potential of wooden buildings. Finally, we compare future wooden and concrete building scenarios regarding the climate benefits for the metropolitan area. We use data provided by the regional authority of the study area on predicted residential building construction. According to our findings, switching to wooden construction in urban areas can have a significant climate benefit for the studied region. Increasing wooden construction can cut carbon emissions by 0.56 Mt and increase the carbon storage by 1.83 Mt in the study area, an amount that is four times bigger than the yearly emissions from traffic in the same urban area. The findings are not only useful for the city of Helsinki but also to other global cities which have committed to carbon neutral strategies and have sustainable forestry practices available.

FRESHER: Challenges and opportunities for building Health/Healthy futures

Abstract Background FRESHER (2016-2018) Foresight and modelling for European health policy and regulation - is a H2020 project that aimed at representing alternative health Scenarios to test future policies for tacking Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs). The key added-value consists in the combination of qualitative foresight and quantitative forecast approaches: a micro-simulation model, specifically developed by the project, computed the health outcomes of the four FRESHER Scenarios. Methods The Scenarios building activities involved overall more than four-hundred experts and stakeholders, with different backgrounds within and beyond health fields, throughout all the steps of the process, in two surveys and nine workshops. The horizon scanning phase led to identify a wide range of societal trends that impact health and NCDs. Considering a long-term horizon at 2050, eight trends were then selected and ranked according to their importance and uncertainty. Results In the Scenario Building phase, the combination of different evolutions of the selected trends resulted in four alternative futures: a Business as Usual Scenario, “The rich get healthier”, two response Scenarios, “We will Health you” and “Healthy together”, and a worst case Scenario “Desolation Health”. The scenarios imagine different futures and depict how health would subsequently change in such worlds. Conclusions Given the increasing need to put health at the centre of all policies, it is necessary to make more evident the relationship between societal trends and their impact on health, specifically for NCDs. The translation of trends, and their evolutions, into changes of risk factors is a viable option to assess the impact of public health policy. FRESHER aimed to trigger a dialogue across different scientific and policy communities outside the health sector in order to define innovative strategies and identify disruptive innovations.

Future scenarios and power generation of marine energy deployment around Great Britain

Renewable energy from wave energy converters and tidal stream turbines could play an important role in the future power system of Great Britain. However, scenarios of future deployment are highly uncertain and rarely spatially or temporally detailed enough to be used as suitable inputs to power system models. This paper presents a new resource for power system modellers which combines published projections for wave and tidal stream installed capacities with discrete geospatial coordinates of potential deployment sites from the literature to develop ‘build scenarios’ of future deployment around GB. Three build scenarios (low, intermediate and high) are presented for both wave and tidal stream generation. These scenarios can be used by power system modellers to analyse the contributions of marine energy to the future power system of Great Britain.

Wargaming Simulator MASA SWORD for Training and Education of Czech Army Officers

The article deals with expanding the capabilities of the University of Defence in the field of training and education of new officers of the Czech Army using newly introduced simulation technology. First, it looks at the beginnings of the use of simulations to support and develop teaching. One of those steps was the establishment of a professional-level computer games group. This gave students the opportunity to gain experience in commanding and managing combat while playing computer games such as Counter-Strike. Currently, students have the opportunity to deepen their command and tactical skills during practical field training or in virtual environments while playing games based on virtual and constructive simulation. Another section explains the importance and role of these simulations in teaching professional soldiers. It is very important for future combat commanders to gain as much experience as possible in commanding and directing combat activity in the conduct of military operations before they occur. Finally, it deals with the newly acquired MASA SWORD simulator, which offers another and much more complex tool for gaining valuable experience. MASA SWORD, unlike the software currently in use, can be controlled by only one user without the need to connect other users or perform control exercises. It includes a scenario building tool, constructive simulation and analytical tools for evaluating created simulations. In addition to its use in teaching and educating students, the simulator can be used for staff training, support for commander planning and decision-making, analysis and, last but not least, operational research. In the last section, the article evaluates the usefulness of simulations for teaching, science and research. It also reports on ongoing qualitative research methods to predict the next direction of development and possible connectivity with other simulators.

Performance of an RC building under seismic and tsunami actions in sequence via nonlinear dynamic analysis including soil-structure interaction

This research presents a methodology to study the behavior of buildings subjected to seismic and tsunami loading in sequence, considering soil structure interaction effects through a complete dynamic analysis. The case-study building is an RC frame, which is assumed to be located in a coastal city in Chile, and built on sandy soil. A 3D Soil-Structure Interaction (SSI) model, including the non-linear behavior of both the structure and the soil using finite element method (FEM) was presented. Synthetic seismic ground motion records and tsunami inundation time histories were generated, consistent with the same earthquake source. Building performance was first assessed considering the SSI model for each hazard separately and compared to a Fixed Base (FB) model. Then, the SSI model was subjected to seismic and tsunami loading in sequence. Engineering Demand Parameters (EDPs) of roof displacement, interstory drift ratio (IDR) and reinforcement strain in beams and columns were analyzed. These EDPs presented a larger response to the tsunami when the response to the previous earthquake was larger. Finally, two vertical evacuation building scenarios were studied: the location of the refugees and the effect of an aftershock occurring simultaneously with the tsunami inundation. Results showed that the location of the refugees did not generate significant differences in the building response, and the aftershock increased the response only when it coincided with the maximum tsunami force.

Life Cycle Carbon Emission Assessment of Building Refurbishment: A Case Study of Zero-Carbon Pavilion in Shanghai Yangpu Riverside

Life cycle building carbon assessment can promote the development of carbon emission reduction. The main difficulties in the process of assessment are the boundary selection and inventory collection, especially when carbon emission assessment is needed in the early stage of design and construction, or when the calculation relates to disposal and refurbishment. It is significant to make full and rational use of design documents, standard documents, and related software. This paper focuses on the life cycle carbon emission assessment of building refurbishment. It explores the carbon emission assessment methodologies and procedures in every phase of the building life cycle, taking a zero-carbon pavilion refurbishment project as a case study. This case study is located in the Shanghai Yangpu Riverside Park, refurbished from an existing hydrologic monitoring building. The carbon emission reduction potential of renovation and the solar photovoltaic system applied in the building are analyzed. The data was collected referring to architectural design documents and related standards. The energy consumption during the operational phase is simulated using DesignBuilder. The life-cycle carbon emission per floor area of the existing building renovation scenario is 2.39 t, and the new building scenario is 2.69 t, which are both at a low level among other cases. The refurbished existing building saves nearly one-third of the carbon dioxide emissions during the construction phase compared to new construction. The application of a photovoltaic system also saves one-third of energy consumption and carbon emissions during the operational phase.

Quantification of how mechanical ventilation influences the airborne infection risk of COVID-19 and HVAC energy consumption in office buildings.

This paper presents an EnergyPlus-based parametric analysis to investigate the infection risk of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) under different mechanical ventilation scenarios for a typical medium-sized office building in various climate zones. A Wells-Riley (WR) based Gammaitoni-Nucci (GN) model was employed to quantitatively calculate the airborne infection risk. The selected parameters for the parametric analysis include the climate zone, outdoor air fraction, fraction of infectors, quanta generation rate, and exposure time. The loss and deposition of particles are not considered. The results suggest that the COVID-19 infection risk varies significantly with climate and season under different outdoor air fraction scenarios since the building heating and cooling load fundamentally impacts the supply airflow rate and thus directly influences the amount of mechanical ventilation, which determines the dilution ratio of contaminants. This risk assessment identified the climate zones that benefit the most and the least from increasing the outdoor air fraction. The climate zones such as 1A (Honolulu, HI), 2B (Tucson, AZ), 3A (Atlanta, GA), and 7 (International Falls, MN) are the most energy-efficient locations when it comes to increasing the outdoor air fraction to reduce the COVID-19 infection risk. In contrast, the climate zones such as 6A (Rochester, MN) and 6B (Great Falls, MT) are the least energy-efficient ones. This paper facilitates understanding a widely recommended COVID-19 risk mitigation strategy (i.e., increase the outdoor airflow rate) from the perspective of energy consumption.Electronic Supplementary MaterialSupplementary material is available for this article at 10.1007/s12273-022-0937-5 and is accessible for authorized users.

The role of adaptive reuse in historic urban landscapes towards cities of inclusion. The case of acre

PurposeCities are facing challenges that dramatically affect their social and physical landscapes, leading to the increase of urban segregation and polarization. One response to these challenges is adaptive reuse, yet, in heterogeneous communities, these adaptations are often a source of conflict, because local actions often lack an integrative approach, leading to further exclusion. In this paper the authors explore the potential of adaptive reuse of urban heritage as a planning tool to support inclusiveness and heterogeneity.Design/methodology/approachThe city of Acre is used as a case study, where different scenarios for urban heritage are proposed and tested among stakeholders through interviews. These aim to explore how adaptive reuse processes can lead to the inclusion or exclusion of certain groups and how design interventions in historic urban landscapes challenge the way the current disconnected historic and urban layers interact.FindingsThe paper presents the commonalities and differences between the interviewees' perceptions on Acre's functioning, their idea of inclusiveness and other aspects related to urban design. Moreover, it highlights the existing conflicts of interest, value prioritization and the adequacy of the proposed scenarios, serving as a way to verify the accuracy of the scenario building process.Originality/valueTesting an urban design tool related to adaptive reuse of urban heritage in a real and extreme case, based on the guidelines of the Historic Urban Landscape Recommendation; and critically analysing the sources of conflict and value systems to address inclusion in heterogenous settings.

A Reference Architecture for IoT-Enabled Smart Buildings

The management and analytics of big data generated from IoT sensors deployed in smart buildings pose a real challenge in today’s world. Hence, there is a clear need for an IoT focused Integrated Big Data Management and Analytics framework to enable the near real-time autonomous control and management of smart buildings. The focus of this paper is on the development and evaluation of the reference architecture required to support such a framework. The applicability of the reference architecture is evaluated by taking into account various example scenarios for a smart building involving the management and analysis of near real-time IoT data from 1000 sensors. The results demonstrate that the reference architecture can guide the complex integration and orchestration of real-time IoT data management, analytics, and autonomous control of smart buildings, and that the architecture can be scaled up to address challenges for other smart environments.

Building Scenarios on the Regional Integration in Eurasia along the New Silk Road

Regions are gaining importance as globalization struggles with local sustainable implementation. Thus, regional integration assumes economic development based on transnational cooperation, including regionalization and regionalism. The New Silk Road (NSR) offers a set of policies (including the Belt and Road Initiative) for regional integration that faces challenges in geopolitics and geoeconomics with problems at the local and regional scale, especially along its core corridor, namely, the Eurasian Land Bridge. Therefore, we focus on the NSR implementation by examining the scenarios for future regional integration along the NSR in Eurasia. Using a stepwise scenario building method, including a literature review and qualitative interviews, four scenarios are outlined to explore regional cooperation and the impacts: from (1) withdrawal/reduction of the NSR towards (2) solo efforts by Chinese shareholders, (3) corridorintegration and finally, (4) deep regional integration. This study examines the interface between economic geography and international relations.

Strategic scenarios for maritime spatial planning in an European outermost region—The case of the Azores

The Maritime Spatial Planning process plans towards a desired future (Vision/Goal). Such vision is usually an integration of various aspirations from different stakeholders and sectors that depend on the related policy/governance framework. In this sense, a tool such as scenario-building is of paramount importance to MSP once it helps decision-makers visualize the future that might unfold due to specific the actions/policies needed to make such a future more likely to happen. Along these lines, this work presents the methodology and results of the scenario building process developed and applied in the Macaronesia Maritime Spatial Planning (MarSP) project, for the Autonomous Region of Azores. The methodology is structured in four main steps: (i) setting MSP objectives based on policy review and following stakeholders’ inputs; (ii) identifying key objectives after consultation with regional experts; (iii) developing scenario storylines; and (iv) balancing across scenarios based on feedback from stakeholders’ engagement. Three main pre-established scenarios were developed, balancing the pillars of sustainable development, namely: “Blue Society,” “Blue Growth”, and “Blue Development”. In a consultative and participatory process, the three scenarios were later modified and validated, integrating the preferences of stakeholders, being the most voted (preferred) scenario “Blue Development”. Results highlight the importance of applying a participatory approach to scenario building in MSP to understand the preferences and expectations of different stakeholders. The methodology can be relevant and adjustable to other regions, tailored to specific settings, in support of decision making towards an adaptive MSP process.