Infrastructure planning has often been criticised on the basis that decisions to invest in initiatives are based on a simple 'predict and provide' methodology. These criticisms have typically been aimed at the failure of initiative proponents to fully consider a range of scenarios. However, the criticisms are also relevant in other ways.
Notably, both here and overseas, there has been little acknowledgment that various factors (or 'drivers') that shape the future can be largely outside the control of individual governments and others who make infrastructure decisions. If we do not expressly consider those drivers, we run the risk of making sub-optimal infrastructure decisions. Even worse, poorly considered decisions may make the task of achieving our goals harder than might otherwise have been the case.
Depending on the interplay of these drivers, the problems we face today may persist and become more difficult in the future, or they may diminish. Other problems may arise, even though they do not exist at present.
Infrastructure Australia believes that policy and investment decisions should be made having regard to a range of potential views of the future, and that scenario assessment provides the platform for robust decision-making and realisation of goals/outcomes. Infrastructure Australia is therefore looking to proponents to assess whether:
• the problems we face are likely to be enduring and significant under a range of scenarios; and
• (at Stages 5 and 6) whether the options to deal with those problems are likely to be effective under a range of scenarios.
In this context, Infrastructure Australia is looking to proponents to present some scenario analysis at the problem identification/analysis/assessment and options assessment stages of Infrastructure Australia's seven stage framework.
Infrastructure Australia is mindful of the fact that scenario analysis is not yet widely applied. Therefore, at this time, Infrastructure Australia is not proposing a fixed methodology or approach to the scenario analysis. The material below is provided as general guidance.