- The ITRC assessment aims to test performance (and robustness) across a range of future conditions (scenarios) of long-term strategies for national infrastructure provision.
- Scenarios are generated from variables exogenous to the analysis: changes to the national and global economy, demographic changes and environmental changes.
- A range of headline infrastructure strategies are proposed, effecting change in infrastructure use and provision across two main dimensions: changes in demand management, and changes in capacity provision (through changes to system efficiencies or infrastructure composition).
- Changes in capacity provision imply a range of different capital investment levels.
- Short-term (to 2030) and long-term (to 2050 and beyond ) strategies are combined to give a range of strategy options over time for each sector.
- Two nexuses are considered: Energy-Transport and Energy-Water.
- The sector strategies for these nexuses are combined according to the energy demand implications of each future transport or water strategy (e.g. a particular transport strategy with very high electricity demand expectations can only be combined with energy strategy futures where electricity generation is appropriately high).
- Waste is assumed to be largely independent of other sectors.
- A small number of cross-sector strategy combinations are suggested.