New ways of supporting decision making: linking qualitative storylines with quantitative modelling

To explore how people will live and work in Europe, what the landscape will look like and what the environmental consequences will be in some 35 years from now, the PRELUDE project (EEA 2007) of the European Environment Agency developed five different land-use scenarios for Europe. The project was carried out according to a Story And Simulation (SAS) approach in which, iteratively, storylines developed in participatory sessions are underpinned by land-use models. Storylines in this context are defined as narratives about future developments in Europe. They provide qualitative information on a broad range of issues in an integrated context