Table Of ContentZukunft und Forschung
Roman Peperhove · Karlheinz Steinmüller
Hans-Liudger Dienel Editors
Envisioning
Uncertain Futures
Scenarios as a Tool in Security,
Privacy and Mobility Research
Zukunft und Forschung
Band 6
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Wissenschaftliche Schriftenreihe "Zukunft und Forschung" der Forschungsgruppe
Innovation und Gesellschaft am Fachhochschul-Masterstudiengang Soziale
Innovation
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Roman Peperhove · Karlheinz Steinmüller ·
Hans-Liudger Dienel
(Eds.)
Envisioning
Uncertain Futures
Scenarios as a Tool in Security,
Privacy and Mobility Research
Editors
Roman Peperhove Karlheinz Steinmüller
Berlin, Germany Berlin, Germany
Hans-Liudger Dienel
Berlin, Germany
Zukunft und Forschung
ISBN 978-3-658-25073-7 ISBN 978-3-658-25074-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-25074-4
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Content
Foreword ................................................................................................. 9
Yair Sharan
Introduction .......................................................................................... 15
Roman Peperhove
I. Scenarios – A Methodological Tool
Narrative Scenarios as an Analytical Instrument ............................ 23
Karlheinz Steinmüller
Scenarios that tell a Story. Normative Narrative Scenarios – An
Efficient Tool for Participative Innovation-Oriented Foresight ..... 37
Robert Gaßner, Karlheinz Steinmüller
Surprising Scenarios. Imagination as a Dimension of Foresight ... 49
Aharon Hauptman, Karlheinz Steinmüller
Security 2025: Scenarios as an Instrument for Dialogue ................. 69
Lars Gerhold, Karlheinz Steinmüller
Didactical Functions of Dark and Bright Scenarios: Examples
from the European Transport Industry ............................................. 83
Massimo Moraglio, Hans-Liudger Dienel and Robin Kellermann
6 Content
II. Scenarios in Practice
The Use of SWOT Analysis for Future Scenarios:
A Case Study of Privacy and Emerging Technologies .................. 105
Liisa Luoto, Annika Lonkila
The Future of Water Use: Scenarios for Water Management in
Telangana - Strengthening Local Governance in the Minor
Irrigation Sector .................................................................................. 133
Angela Jain, Sascha Dannenberg
The Future of Water Use: Construction of the Scenarios in the
Project ................................................................................................... 143
Sascha Dannenberg, Angela Jain
“Peace Operations 2025”: From Shaping Factors to Scenarios .... 155
Björn Theis, Stefan Köppe
Anticipating New Security Threats: The FESTOS Project ............ 175
Yair Sharan
The Development of FESTOS Scenarios .......................................... 189
Roman Peperhove
The FESTOS Scenarios ....................................................................... 205
Karlheinz Steinmüller
Content 7
III.Synopsis
Reflections on how to Improve Future Scenarios .......................... 237
Roman Peperhove
Conclusion ........................................................................................... 257
Roman Peperhove
About the Authors ............................................................................. 263
Foreword
Yair Sharan
The term scenario appears regularly in different contexts and with different
intentions. Sometimes a scenario describes an opportunity and sometimes an
image of the future. Sometimes it demonstrates risks, sometimes an economic
situation and sometimes a smart speculation. Most people know the term itself
even though there are different interpretations. In research, a structured
development of scenarios became popular after World War II in order to be
prepared for coming challenges in the emerging bipolar world. The formerly
exclusive military usages have been replaced by a broad variety of contexts in
which scenarios play a prominent role today. However, in our increasingly
complex world it seems to be more necessary than ever to think about potential
future developments beforehand – to be aware of threats and opportunities. This
is true for economy and politics but especially for research.
In research projects it is possible to shed light on aspects which are not
yet widely recognized. Using different qualitative and quantitative methods,
researchers seek to build a complete information bank to be able to answer the
most important questions: What might the world of tomorrow look like? What
kind of challenges will we have to face in the future?
It is not possible to answer such questions easily to the satisfaction of
everybody. It is not possible to predict the future for complex and volatile
environments. It is not even possible to predict future events in closed contexts
with absolute certainty (it is, however, possible to have a surprisingly high hit
ratio…). Experts in foresight methods do not deny this fact. They might reply that
it does not diminish the need to figure out potential future events or developments.
That is: to be aware of potential future events. The questions remains, how might
it be possible to build a structured picture of a future?
One answer to this question is: by developing scenarios. Scenario
research affords a long history and is accepted in the military, the economy and
social science. Most scenario methods offer the option to develop not just one
scenario but a number of varying scenarios – for instance all shades from worst to
best-case scenarios. It is possible to depict the futures of different shapes and
characteristics including stable factors and even very unlikely events. Unlikely
events, so called wild cards, might be useful to test scenario construction or to
10 Yair Sharan
focus on uncertainties or neglected aspects of futures. Developing scenarios is thus
a combination of several steps, some of them formal and some of them innovative.
This is a kind of an out of the box thinking process – creative but convincing.
Scenarios enable researchers to deal with complex information: Either by
structuring single factors and assessing their influence on each other or by using
creative methods to gather relevant information for other possible scenarios. Either
way, scenarios are and can be seen as an analytical tool- a very powerful one. They
serve also as a communication tool between the analyzer, the researcher and the
user, the decision maker. They are not a method for data collection but data
processing and depend, therefore, heavily on the input. The quality of the input
and the skills of involved researchers influence the value of scenarios.
It is not easy, however, to combine creativity with scientific input in order
to develop scenarios. A scenario, which is not coherent, plausible, consistent,
perceivable, useable and developed transparently, will not be convincing. Such
criteria can be used for (self-) evaluation and assessment. A criterion which is not
always useful – but often quoted – to assess the quality of a scenario is likeliness
(how high is the prospect of its realization. It should be clarified here that
likelihood is actually the probability of the scenario happening. Likelihood is
perceived as a "softer" word to present this parameter rather than probability,
which is perceived as a "precise" number however small or large. A decision
maker who considers things in a more relative and qualitative context might
therefore prefer likelihoods or probabilities). However, even if a scenario is
deemed to be unlikely it might still be useful as it opens decision makers' eyes to
unsuspected events which may be important for early preparation purposes. The
decision maker is confronted with an alternative scenario and he is free to consider
and prioritize taking into account aspects like likeliness, desirability and impact.
(In this context, for example, a wild card, which is a scenario with a low
probability and high impact, will receive higher priority than a scenario which
results in low effects.)
People tend to take likely scenarios into consideration much more than
unlikely ones, even if the unlikely scenario may have a much bigger impact. From
a security perspective it is a difference that matters: Due to media coverage,
movies and books people in general overestimate the realization prospects of some
threats. Others are not present at all. New technologies and an increasing
interconnectivity between systems can lead to threats which are still under the
radar. A simple computer bug installed by a skillful terrorist or criminal can set
off a cascade of failures and breakdowns, which will result in horrific effects.
Either way, potential threats, which come along with new technologies might not
