Scenario PlanningBioR · Health Security

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Plain-language guide

No background needed. Here is what this platform is for, and what every term means — in one plain sentence each.

In 60 seconds

Every pandemic breaks the plan written for the last one. This platform helps you find the weak spots in a preparedness plan before a real crisis exposes them.

It does that in three steps you can run yourself: Diagnose reads a plan and surfaces what it quietly assumes is true. Define turns that into one clear question worth answering. The Gate decides whether you are ready to go further. It never tries to predict the next pandemic — it stress-tests the plan you already have.

The big ideas

Scenario planning

A way to pressure-test a plan by imagining several very different futures and asking "would our plan still work?"

It is not fortune-telling. You do not pick the "most likely" future — you prepare for a range of them.

Purposing

The first stage: deciding the one right question to ask before you spend months answering it.

It ends with a go/no-go decision. Only then do you build the scenarios.

Readiness vs preparedness

Preparedness is being ready for a threat you have seen before (like flu). Readiness is coping with one you have never seen.

A country can be excellent at the first and still be caught out by the second — that gap is what this work targets.

In a Purposing session

Assumption

Something a plan quietly treats as certain — for example, "we will spot the next outbreak early."

Structural silence

An assumption a plan never says out loud — the most dangerous kind, because no one is watching it.

Example: a plan built around flu silently assumes the next threat will also be respiratory.

Assumptions Register

The list of everything a plan takes for granted, written down so each one can be tested.

Windtunnel

Running each assumption through each imagined future to see whether it holds up or breaks.

Like putting a car in a wind tunnel — you stress it on purpose to find the weak points before the real storm.

Purpose (statement)

The single sentence that says what you are testing, for whom, and by when.

Everything in the project is measured against it. If a task does not serve the Purpose, it does not belong.

The Gate

A deliberate pause that asks "are we actually ready to build, or would we be building on sand?" — answered go, go-with-conditions, or stop.

Engagement

One saved piece of Purposing work — its assumptions, its windtunnel results, and its Purpose, kept together.

The method behind it

TUNA

A checklist for how hard a situation is to predict: Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, Ambiguous.

The more "Novel" a threat is, the less the past can guide you — so you test rather than forecast.

OSPA

The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach — the established method this platform follows.

Re-perception

The shift in how leaders see a problem that the work is meant to produce.

Non-probabilistic

We do not put odds on futures we have never seen — forcing a percentage on the truly new turns careful thinking back into guessing.

Ready for the detail? The Learn pages go deeper on the method, and every AI tool labels whether it is running a live model or a transparent demo.