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To create a scenario, firstly its name and a brief description should be defined under sheet scenarios (we recommend to not use spaces nor unusual characters for its name). To specify the characteristics of the new scenario two new sheets should be inserted in the file, namely {scenarioName}_settings and {scenarioName}_activities.
{scenarioName}_settings overrides variables in sheet settings, but it doesn't allow to introduce new variables. Most variables are just scalar while some are vectors (you can define up to 100 values each). For some of these latter ones (e.g. forceFarmingForCashPremium) the vector is interpreted in the model as a temporal dimension, e.g. the second value is the value of the second year from when the simulation started. As a convenience, on these variables that are clearly labeled as such in the datafile, users can input only the first year as a short way to write the same value on all simulation years.
{scenarioName}_activities lets change the characteristics of each individual activity in the model from the default scenario, specifying on which year the change should be applied. There are three parts of an activity that could be changed: the gross margin, the decoupling rate and the matrix coefficients.
Changing the gross margin it is possible to simulate changes in product prices or costs.
The decoupling rates lets specify for each activity/year if the corresponding coupled premium should be ''recorded`` for future right assignment calculation (''-1``), if nothing should be done about decoupling (''0``) of if previously recorded rights should be gave back to farmers as decoupled premium and in which percentage. RegMAS is able to store the rights of each individual farmer, allowing a very precise modelling of decoupling mechanism.
Results in the output are clearly labeled with the running scenario, allowing easy confrontation between them.