Robinson’s “Backcasting” Approach

John Robinson introduced the term “backcast” in a paper in Futures in 1990 [1]. It formalized an approach that others had used before, sometimes called a “strategic” or “normative” approach. Below, the steps in his procedure are reproduced.

Actors

Unspecified/flexible

Procedure

1. Determine objectives
   • Describe the purpose of the analysis
   • Determine temporal, spatial and susbstantive scope of the analysis
   • Decide number and type of scenarios
2. Specify goals, constraints and targets
   • Set goals, constraints and targets for scenario analysis
   • Set goals, constraints and targets for exogenous variables
3. Describe present system
   • Outline physical consumption and production processes
4. Specify exogenous variables
   • Develop description of exogenous variables
   • Specify external inputs to scenario analysis
5. Undertake scenario analysis
   • Choose scenario generation approach
   • Analyse future consumption and production processes at the end-point and mid-points
   • Develop scenario(s)
   • Iterate as required to achieve internal consistency
6. Undertake impact analysis
   • Consolidate scenario results
   • Analyse social, economic and environmental impacts
   • Compare results of the last two steps with step 2, above
   • Iterate analysis (steps 2, 4 and 5) as required to ensure consistency between goals and results

References

[1] Robsinson, John. 1990. “Futures Under Glass: A Recipe for People Who Hate to Predict,” Futures October.