Abstract
The present research aims to identify the role of future planning scenarios in reducing the social impacts of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Saudi Arabia. It defines the foundations of the success, types, approaches for using, as well as criteria and indicators of designing and building future planning scenarios to reduce the social impacts of COVID-19. It also explores the differences in the participants' responses to the criteria and indicators of designing and building future planning scenarios to reduce the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in Saudi Arabia due to academic degree, position in the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development, and years of experience. The author adopted the descriptive analytical approach and used a questionnaire to collect data. The results provide a ranking of each item in the five domains according to the participants' responses regarding the benefits of planning scenarios, the foundations of success, types of planning scenarios, methodological steps of using them, and criteria and indicators of designing and building them. Additionally, the results showed no differences in the responses to the criteria and indicators of designing and building the scenarios that reduce the social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic due to academic degree, and years of experience, whereas there were differences due to position.