Computer-aided scenario design using participatory backcasting: A case study of sustainable vision creation in a Japanese city

Designing backcasting scenarios is a powerful approach to the development of sustainable visions and pathways for governments or enterprises in the early stage of their policy-making or strategic decision-making process. To date, a number of scholars have proposed various backcasting methods, in which workshops are often used to reflect the voices of stakeholders. However, it is still a challenge to test the validity of scenarios because the process of designing backcasting scenarios is not transparent or shared among involved stakeholders. This also prevents reusing knowledge and intermediate outputs generated during the scenario design process. To solve these problems, this paper aims to develop a method for supporting a backcasting scenario design by introducing computational assistance. A scenario design support system called the sustainable society scenario (3S) simulator is used to visualize a scenario's logical sequence of the scenario in graph format. To demonstrate the proposed method, a case study for the city of Toyama, a Japanese municipality, was performed using three workshops with citizen participation. The results showed that two different scenarios, involving future visions and associated pathways, were developed by reflecting the diversified values of local citizens. The usage of the 3S simulator visualized the logical relations of the described scenarios, which consist of five blocks—problem definition, subgoals to achieve visions, measures to attain these subgoals, verification, and conclusions. This visualization is effective to increase the verifiability and reusability of the scenarios for evidence-based policy-making processes.