Development of sustainable society scenario simulator toward sustainable manufacturing (4th Report) - A method for drawing scenario variants based on what-if analysis

Designing sustainability scenarios is a promising approach to describing visions and transitions of the manufacturing industry targeting a sustainable society. However, computational assistance in designing such scenarios is not sufficiently provided in the current scenario research. This paper proposes a method for drawing scenario variants by executing what-if analysis of existing scenarios in order to explore different possible futures in the scenario design process. To support composing scenario variants, the method defines scenario rationales that should be changed in the process of what-if analysis. Results of a case study involving an existing sustainability scenario show that the method successfully helps draw a new scenario variant by modifying a part of the rationales of the original scenario. Consequently, 82% of the texts of the new scenario are described from the original scenario.