The ScenML language follows XML syntax. It’s structure is defined by the ScenML document type definition (DTD). It has the following main elements:

• <ScenMLdoc> - the root element
• <years> - the years, containing a base year and one or more scenario years
• <baseyr> - the base year
• <scenyr> - one of the scenario years
• <items> - a collection of regions, themes, actors and scenarios
• <alias> - an optional alias, renaming an element for display purposes (e.g., rename “region” to “country”)
• <region> - a spatial unit of analysis (e.g., country, region); for an institutional analysis, this could be the institution (e.g., firm, government agency)
• <theme> - a thematic “axis” of the analysis (e.g., economics, environment, globalization)
• <drvforce> - a driving force of the scenario (e.g., climate change, technological change)
• <actor> - a major actor in the scenario (e.g., economic sector, financial institution, government, firm)
• <scenario> - a scenario, or alternative story of the future
• <notes> - the qualitative aspects of the scenario: a collection of note elements
• <note> - an individual note, which is a text element optionally labeled by year and item
• <bibliography> - a list of labeled bibliographic entries
• <entry> - an item in the bibliography, labeled by a key attribute and an optional cite attribute; unstructured, essentially a free-form paragraph
• <indicators> - the quantitative aspects of the scenario: a collection of indicators
• <indicator> - a quantitative indicator of the progress of the scenario; labeled by shortname, theme, units, minmax and weight, for consistency with the Dashboard of Sustainability, and optionally labeled by drvforce to indicate that it is a proxy for a particular driving force
• <name> - the long name for an indicator
• <value> - a numerical value for an indicator, labeled by region, year and scenario

There is also the common text element, allowed or required as a child element for many of the elements above:

• <text> - structured text for notes, etc., made up of one or more paragraphs
• <p> - a paragraph, the main structural element of a text element
• <i>, <b>, <sup>, <sub> - formatting instructions for paragraphs (italic, bold, superscript, subscript)
• <bibref> - a reference to a bibliography entry, labeled by the key for the entry
• <link> - a hyperlink, labeled by a uri and containing the same formatting elements as a paragraph