Identification of a small reliable and efficient set of consistent scenarios

In scenario analyses, in which experts have rated the consistency of impact factor levels, all scenarios are defined by vectors of these impact factors. Because the identification of scenarios out of all combinatorial scenarios was time consuming and inefficient, three new approaches were developed: Local efficiency as a goal function of a simple combinatorial optimisation, a multidimensional distance indicator for sets, and a small and efficient selection algorithm. The methods are illustrated and tested on a large scenario analysis from an ETH-UNS case study. Their convergent validity is shown by the comparison of the selected scenarios.