{"schema_version":1,"research_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp06_external_evaluation_20260803","source_assessment_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__futurism_foresight:P1:v0","cell_id":"representation_independent_interface_contract__futurism_foresight","search_queries":["site:mwdh2o.com scenario planning IRP uncertainty scenarios official water","water scenarios interoperability representations scenario planning provenance research","scenario planning software data model scenario interoperability standard foresight","ISO 14082 strategic intelligence management foresight official","site:sciencedirect.com scenario translation consistency narratives quantitative models scenario primary research","scenario archetypes consistency comparability scenario studies primary research futures","water scenario planning provenance traceability uncertainty scenarios research paper","site:w3.org/TR prov-o provenance recommendation","\"Methods for translating narrative scenarios\" pdf Mallampalli","\"Scenario development for water resource planning and management\" pdf Dong","site:research.wur.nl scenario translation narrative quantitative models consistency","site:gov.uk futures toolkit scenarios quality consistency provenance"],"sources":[{"source_id":"S1","title":"White Paper on Scenario Planning","publisher":"Metropolitan Water District of Southern California","url":"https://www.mwdh2o.com/media/17993/white-paper-on-scenario-planning-april-2020.pdf","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"2020-04-28","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["A large regional water authority formally adopted scenario planning to address uncertain climatic, demographic, regulatory, and behavioral drivers.","The authority's method connects scenarios to resource mixes, signposts, robust actions, and adaptation actions, making preservation of scenario meaning consequential to planning."]},{"source_id":"S2","title":"2020 Integrated Resources Plan Regional Needs Assessment","publisher":"Metropolitan Water District of Southern California","url":"https://www.mwdh2o.com/media/a5iahydf/04122022-irp-7-1-b-l.pdf","source_class":"GOVERNMENT_OR_REGULATOR","publication_date":"2022-04-12","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Metropolitan's Board established an IRP Special Committee to oversee development of the scenario-based plan.","The plan uses multiple scenarios, technical analyses, adaptive management, continuing information generation, and reporting for a service area of approximately 19 million people.","This identifies a plausible authorizer and a consequential operational setting, but it does not request a representation-independent behavioral contract."]},{"source_id":"S3","title":"Model and Data Interoperability","publisher":"CGIAR Foresight Initiative","url":"https://foresight.cgiar.org/data-interoperability/","source_class":"OFFICIAL_ORGANIZATION_DATA","publication_date":"n.d.","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["CGIAR describes interoperability as fundamental to foresight involving food, land, and water systems.","It identifies heterogeneous formats, standards, sources, models, and organizational participants as integration challenges.","It emphasizes rich metadata, but does not provide behavioral equivalence rules for strategic scenario sets."]},{"source_id":"S4","title":"Scenario development for water resource planning and management: A review","publisher":"TU Delft Research Portal","url":"https://research.tudelft.nl/en/publications/scenario-development-for-water-resource-planning-and-management-a/","source_class":"AUTHORITATIVE_SECONDARY","publication_date":"2013","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Peer-reviewed water-resources literature recognizes scenario development as an established response to climatic, socioeconomic, and management uncertainty.","The literature contains multiple qualitative and quantitative techniques rather than a single canonical representation."]},{"source_id":"S5","title":"Methods for translating narrative scenarios into quantitative assessments of land use change","publisher":"Duke University","url":"https://scholars.duke.edu/publication/1134482","source_class":"AUTHORITATIVE_SECONDARY","publication_date":"2016-08-01","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Translation from narrative scenarios to quantitative model representations is an established workflow.","Respecting the source scenario's intent requires translation to be thoughtful, transparent, and reproducible.","Existing work offers a choice among translation methods and stakeholder/expert roles, not a reusable black-box behavioral acceptance oracle."]},{"source_id":"S6","title":"New outlooks in traceability and consistency of integrated scenarios","publisher":"European Journal of Futures Research / Springer Nature","url":"https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40309-015-0077-6","source_class":"PRIMARY_RESEARCH","publication_date":"2015-12-07","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["Traceability and consistency are identified as central scenario-quality challenges and are difficult to achieve in practice.","Integrated story-and-simulation scenarios are especially challenged by translation across qualitative and quantitative components.","The paper operationalizes quality criteria and applies them empirically, but does not define substitutable software representations through an abstract state machine and conformance suite."]},{"source_id":"S7","title":"PROV-O: The PROV Ontology","publisher":"World Wide Web Consortium","url":"https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/","source_class":"STANDARD","publication_date":"2013-04-30","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["W3C PROV supplies a standard, extensible model for representing, exchanging, and integrating provenance across systems and domains.","It includes entities, activities, agents, derivation, revision, invalidation, collections, and plans relevant to scenario provenance and version histories.","It solves generic provenance interchange, not scenario identity, uncertainty semantics, plurality, or decision-use conformance."]},{"source_id":"S8","title":"ASAM OpenSCENARIO DSL 2.2.0 — Domain model introduction","publisher":"Association for Standardization of Automation and Measuring Systems","url":"https://publications.pages.asam.net/standards/ASAM_OpenSCENARIO/ASAM_OpenSCENARIO_DSL/latest/domain-model/dm_overview.html","source_class":"STANDARD","publication_date":"2026-03-19","accessed_at":"2026-08-03","claims_supported":["A mature adjacent standard uses a domain model incorporating behavior and data to make scenario definitions interoperable between tools.","The standard defines normative types, entities, actions, methods, and extension mechanisms.","Its scope is dynamic driving scenarios, not plural strategic-foresight narratives or water-planning scenario identity."]}],"problem_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"The broader problem is visible and consequential: a regional water authority uses scenarios to guide reliability and adaptive actions; CGIAR reports heterogeneous foresight data and models; translation research says preserving narrative intent must be transparent and reproducible; and primary research identifies traceability and consistency as difficult scenario-quality challenges. No source directly measures how often a water authority's scenario meaning changes across decks, spreadsheets, causal graphs, and simulations, or the resulting decision harm. The candidate's exact prevalence and severity therefore remain unverified.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S5","S6"]},"stakeholder_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"Metropolitan Water District is an identifiable regional adopter setting, and its Board/IRP Special Committee is a credible authorizer for scenario-planning work. Its official documents express needs for multiple scenarios, adaptive management, information generation, reporting, and reliability analysis. CGIAR separately expresses a need for foresight interoperability. Neither organization expresses demand for this particular behavioral-contract intervention or commits staff, data, or funding to a pilot.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3"]},"prior_art":{"proximity":"ADJACENT_PRIOR_ART","closest_analogues":[{"name":"Transparent and reproducible narrative-to-model scenario translation methods","similarity":"Directly addresses preservation of scenario intent while translating between qualitative narratives and quantitative models.","remaining_difference":"It compares translation methods and roles rather than defining an abstract scenario-set state model, representation-independent operations, identity-forking law, and reusable conformance oracle.","source_ids":["S5"]},{"name":"Traceability and consistency criteria for integrated scenarios","similarity":"Operationalizes two of the proposal's core invariants and empirically evaluates integrated story-and-simulation methodologies.","remaining_difference":"It is a scenario-quality assessment framework, not an opaque component contract that accepts or rejects independently implemented representations through operation-sequence tests.","source_ids":["S6"]},{"name":"CGIAR foresight model/data interoperability and metadata practice","similarity":"Addresses heterogeneous foresight assets, models, formats, standards, metadata, and cross-organizational reuse in food-land-water analysis.","remaining_difference":"It standardizes data integration and metadata rather than behavior, scenario identity transitions, error semantics, side effects, and substitutability.","source_ids":["S3"]},{"name":"W3C PROV provenance interchange","similarity":"Provides interoperable provenance, derivation, revision, invalidation, collection, and responsibility primitives suitable for scenario evidence chains.","remaining_difference":"It does not specify water-foresight scenario semantics, plurality, uncertainty treatment, implication derivation, or conformance across representations.","source_ids":["S7"]},{"name":"ASAM OpenSCENARIO behavioral/data domain model for tool interoperability","similarity":"Shows that scenario definitions can be standardized through a behavior-and-data domain model intended for interoperability between tools.","remaining_difference":"It governs executable driving scenarios in a different domain and does not address plural strategic futures, narrative meaning, contested evidence, or qualitative-to-quantitative equivalence.","source_ids":["S8"]}],"distinctive_claim_remaining":"For a completed water-foresight exercise, a predeclared abstract Scenario Set contract—stable identifiers, explicit horizons, provenance and uncertainty queries, mandatory forks after defining-driver changes, non-mutation on rejected revisions, and representation-independent black-box/metamorphic tests—will detect materially more decision-relevant translation divergence than the authority's existing template, checklist, and manual crosswalk, without requiring representation-specific fields or collapsing substantively distinct scenarios.","confidence":"HIGH"},"implementation_evidence":{"support":"MODERATE","rationale":"Implementation ingredients are credible: scenario translation is already performed; traceability and consistency can be operationalized; W3C PROV can encode provenance and revision relations; and ASAM demonstrates machine-readable scenario domain models spanning behavior and data. A read-only, test-copy pilot with two adapters is technically bounded and reversible. Feasibility remains unproved for the hardest part: eliciting a useful representation-independent semantic surface without freezing one foresight school, hiding decision-relevant context, or exposing restricted provenance. No live workflow, privacy review, adapter build, or conformance trial was found.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"scores":{"meaningful_impact":{"score":4,"rationale":"Scenario interpretations feed regional water reliability, portfolios, signposts, and adaptive actions; unnoticed semantic drift could therefore affect consequential comparisons. Realized impact and incident frequency are unmeasured.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S6"]},"stakeholder_pull":{"score":3,"rationale":"Water and foresight organizations explicitly need scenario planning, traceability, consistency, and interoperability, but no stakeholder requests this behavioral-contract solution.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S6"]},"incremental_advantage":{"score":3,"rationale":"A reusable behavioral oracle could improve on templates, metadata, and method-specific translation review, but the claimed advantage over expert review has not been measured.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S6","S7"]},"distinctiveness_plausibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"No close strategic-foresight implementation was found, but the proposal recombines established translation, provenance, domain-model, and conformance ideas; world novelty was not assessed.","source_ids":["S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"technical_implementability":{"score":4,"rationale":"Read-only adapters, opaque identifiers, version records, invariant checks, and query-based testing are conventional implementable components. Semantic completeness, rather than software construction, is the main uncertainty.","source_ids":["S5","S7","S8"]},"adoption_authority_feasibility":{"score":3,"rationale":"A regional water authority and its Board committee are identifiable, and an offline pilot could fit existing planning oversight. Actual permission, staff ownership, records access, and procurement path are unverified.","source_ids":["S1","S2"]},"evidence_readiness":{"score":3,"rationale":"The problem class, workflows, and adjacent mechanisms are documented well enough to preregister a pilot, but decisive comparative evidence requires proprietary artifacts and blinded testing.","source_ids":["S2","S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"safety_net_benefit":{"score":4,"rationale":"A test-copy, read-only trial can be discarded without changing approved scenarios or live decisions. It can also surface ambiguity before migration, provided conformance is not mistaken for scenario plausibility or evidentiary validity.","source_ids":["S2","S6"]},"scalability":{"score":3,"rationale":"A parameterized contract suite could be reused across representations, but each foresight program may require contested domain semantics, adapters, governance, and leakage review that limit low-cost scaling.","source_ids":["S3","S5","S7","S8"]}},"score_confidence":"MODERATE","costs":{"first_evidence":{"band_2026_usd":"10K_TO_50K","scope":"Six-to-eight-week offline experiment on one completed scenario exercise: contract elicitation, two read-only adapters, six queries, four metamorphic relations, blinded analyst sessions, and a divergence report.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Two engineer-analysts contribute approximately 0.2-0.4 FTE each for six to eight weeks.","A foresight facilitator, data steward, and three blinded analysts participate part-time.","Existing non-live records can be accessed without procurement or extensive redaction.","This is a resource-equivalent estimate, not a vendor quotation; none of the eight sources reports comparable project costs."],"source_ids":["S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"initial_deployment_startup":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Production-grade contract specification, governance record, privacy/threat review, continuous conformance testing, and three to five adapters for current narrative, spreadsheet, graph, and model representations.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["The authority reuses existing repositories and identity/access infrastructure.","No authoritative-record migration occurs in this phase.","One product owner, one to two engineers, a foresight method lead, and legal/data-governance reviewers contribute for three to six months.","No direct external cost benchmark was found."],"source_ids":["S2","S3","S7","S8"]},"operational_launch":{"band_2026_usd":"250K_TO_1M","scope":"Authority-wide launch covering authoritative records, integrations, migration controls, training, documentation, version/deprecation governance, audit logging, support, and parallel operation with the incumbent workflow.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Launch spans multiple planning teams and four to eight representations or tools.","Authoritative records require validation, access controls, and rollback planning.","The estimate excludes replacement of major simulation platforms and excludes infrastructure investment decisions.","No direct external cost benchmark was found."],"source_ids":["S2","S3","S7","S8"]},"annual_recurring":{"band_2026_usd":"50K_TO_250K","scope":"Contract stewardship, adapter maintenance, conformance-suite updates, privacy and leakage audits, user support, training, and behavioral-version reviews.","confidence":"LOW","assumptions":["Approximately 0.5 FTE product/method stewardship and 0.5-1.0 FTE engineering/QA are required.","Major new-tool integrations and contract redesigns are treated as separate projects.","Infrastructure consumption is modest relative to labor.","No direct external cost benchmark was found."],"source_ids":["S2","S3","S7","S8"]}},"verified_pipeline_gates":{"externally_supported_problem":{"status":"YES","reason":"Independent research identifies traceability, consistency, and transparent reproducible translation as real scenario-quality challenges, while official water and foresight organizations use heterogeneous scenarios and models for consequential decisions. Exact local prevalence remains unmeasured but does not negate the externally visible problem class.","source_ids":["S1","S2","S3","S5","S6"]},"externally_credible_adopter_or_authorizer":{"status":"YES","reason":"Metropolitan Water District is a concrete regional operating setting, and its Board-created IRP Special Committee is an identifiable oversight body for scenario-based water planning. This verifies authority plausibility, not willingness to adopt the proposal.","source_ids":["S1","S2"]},"distinct_testable_incremental_claim":{"status":"YES","reason":"The candidate can be compared against the existing template/checklist/manual-crosswalk baseline on predeclared decision-relevant divergences, with explicit failure conditions concerning false equivalence, expressibility, and representation leakage.","source_ids":["S5","S6","S7","S8"]},"bounded_next_evidence_step":{"status":"YES","reason":"One completed exercise, two independently implemented adapters, six queries, four metamorphic relations, blinded analysts, a manual baseline, fixed outcomes, and discardable test copies bound the experiment.","source_ids":["S5","S6"]},"no_unresolved_safety_or_authority_stop":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"The offline design avoids changing live scenarios or decisions, but actual permission to use planning records, handling of restricted provenance and participant attribution, and the governance response to semantic collapse have not been externally verified.","source_ids":["S2","S7"]},"credible_cost_scope_and_range":{"status":"UNCERTAIN","reason":"Bottom-up scopes and resource bands are stated, but no staffing rates, authority-specific integration inventory, procurement estimate, or comparable project benchmark was available in the eight-source evidence set.","source_ids":[]}},"next_evidence_step":"With a participating regional water authority, preregister a six-to-eight-week offline study using one completed, non-live water-scenario exercise. Two independent implementers build a narrative/spreadsheet adapter and a causal-graph or simulation adapter without seeing each other's internals. Three blinded analysts execute six fixed queries covering identity, horizon, provenance, uncertainty, implications, and revision status plus four metamorphic relations covering reorder invariance, unrelated-evidence addition, export/import, and rejected-revision non-mutation. Compare (A) the authority's existing checklist/manual crosswalk and (B) the proposed contract suite on decision-relevant divergence detected, unresolved equivalence judgments, analyst time, and false alarms. Falsify the intervention if the manual baseline consistently recovers the same governed meanings and the contract adds no material detection; if both adapters pass yet disagree on a predeclared decision-relevant question; if ordinary scenarios require representation-specific fields; or if the abstraction collapses distinct futures or exposes restricted provenance. Discard all adapters and test copies after the study unless separately authorized.","blocking_evidence":["No measured prevalence or consequence of representation-induced semantic divergence in an actual regional water-foresight workflow.","No comparative result showing that the behavioral contract detects more decision-relevant divergence than a manual crosswalk or expert review.","No demonstration that independently built passing adapters answer all predeclared decision-relevant questions equivalently.","No participating authority's permission, data-access determination, privacy review, or committed staff/funding.","No external benchmark or authority-specific estimate validating the four cost bands.","No evidence that the contract can preserve contested narrative and facilitation context without freezing one foresight methodology."],"research_disposition":"PARTNERED_RESEARCH_PROGRAM","world_novelty_boundary":"This evaluation found adjacent translation methods, scenario-quality criteria, provenance standards, foresight interoperability practices, and a behavioral/data scenario standard in another domain. It did not measure world novelty, patentability, freedom to operate, market size, or realized impact, and the eight-source search cannot establish absence of other implementations.","arm":"COMPLETE_PROPOSAL_PORTFOLIO","candidate_version":0,"controller_recommendation":{"action":"STOP_EMPIRICAL_RESEARCH_NEEDED","repairable":false,"material_progress_observed":true,"progress_targets":["Secure a regional water-authority partner, records-access approval, data steward, and named pilot authorizer.","Preregister the abstract operations, six queries, four metamorphic relations, manual comparator, scoring rules, and falsifiers before implementers inspect the records.","Build two independent read-only adapters and quantify decision-relevant divergence detection, unresolved judgments, false alarms, and analyst time against the manual baseline.","Test whether passing adapters remain equivalent on a withheld decision-relevant question and whether ordinary cases can be expressed without representation-specific leakage.","Complete privacy, restricted-provenance, participant-attribution, semantic-collapse, and conformance-is-not-validity safeguards.","Obtain staffing estimates or quotations and an integration inventory to validate all four 2026-USD bands."],"reason":"Bounded web research supports the broad problem, identifies a credible authority setting, and leaves a contrastive claim after substantial adjacent prior art. The decisive evidence cannot be obtained by further open-web search: it requires proprietary scenario artifacts, independently built adapters, blinded analysts, and comparative execution against the authority's current workflow. Under the controller rule, this is an empirical-research stop, so repairable is false."},"proposal_index":1}