Future scenarios provide challenging, plausible and relevant stories about how the future could unfold. Urban Futures (UF) research has identified a substantial set (>450) of seemingly disparate scenarios published over the period 1997-2011 and within this research, a sub-set of >160 scenarios has been identified (and categorized) based on their narratives according to the structure first proposed by the Global Scenario Group (GSG) in 1997; three world types (Business as Usual, Barbarization, and Great Transitions) and six scenarios, two for each world type (Policy Reform-PR, Market Forces-MF, Breakdown-B, Fortress World-FW, Eco-Communalism-EC and New Sustainability Paradigm-NSP). It is suggested that four of these scenario archetypes (MF, PR, NSP and FW) are sufficiently distinct to facilitate active stakeholder engagement in futures thinking. Moreover they are accompanied by a well-established, internally consistent set of narratives that provide a deeper understanding of the key fundamental drivers (e.g., STEEP-Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental and Political) that could bring about realistic world changes through a push or a pull effect. This is testament to the original concept of the GSG scenarios and their development and refinement over a 16 year period.
The Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) in integration with Building Information Modelling/Management (BIM) is an optimal approach for delivering construction projects. This is, however fraught with complications, due to the inability of current cost management practices to determine fair risk/reward ratio in IPD arrangements. Previous research has established the advantages of Earned Value Management-based (EVM) method for risk/reward sharing, as well as, how Activity Based Costing (ABC) method can facilitate automating the sharing process. This study proposes an innovative approach to exploit the capabilities of these techniques coupled with BIM in automating/optimising the process of IPD risk/reward sharing. This includes providing mathematical equations for risk/reward sharing and developing a model that strengthens IPD parties' relationships. The process is enhanced through developing an EVM-Web grid that enables the participants to easily track their costs on computers and mobile devices. To demonstrate the applicability and validity of the proposed model, it is applied on a real-life case and displays promising results in terms of flexibility in allocating risk/reward for varying scenarios.
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