Foresight (futures studies)

In futurology, especially in Europe, the term foresight has become widely used to describe activities such as: critical thinking concerning long-term developments, debate and for some futurists who are normative and focus on action driven by their values who may be concerned with effort to create wider participatory democracy. Foresight is a set of competencies and not a value system, however. shaping the future, especially by influencing public policy. In the last decade, scenario methods, for example, have become widely used in some European countries in policy-making. The FORSOCIETY network brings together national Foresight teams from most European countries, and the European Foresight Monitoring Project is collating material on Foresight activities around the world. In addition, foresight methods are being used more and more in regional planning and decision –making (“regional foresight”). Several non-European think-tanks like Strategic Foresight Group are also engaged in foresight studies. The foresight of futurology is also known as strategic foresight. This foresight used by and describing professional futurists trained in Master's programs is the research-driven practice of exploring expected and alternative futures and guiding futures to inform strategy. Foresight includes understanding the relevant recent past; scanning to collect insight about present, futuring to describe the understood future including trend research; environment research to explore possible trend breaks from developments on the fringe and other divergencies that may lead to alternative futures; visioning to define preferred future states; designing strategies to craft this future; and adapting the present forces to implement this plan. There is notable but not complete overlap between foresight and strategic planning, change management, forecasting, and design thinking. At the same time, the use of foresight for companies (“corporate foresight”) is becoming more professional and widespread Corporate foresight is used to support strategic management, identify new business fields and increase the innovation capacity of a firm.

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Strategic foresight

Strategic foresight is a planning-oriented discipline related to futures studies. In a business context, a more action-oriented approach has become well known as corporate foresight. Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. Strategic foresight happens when any planner uses scanned inputs, forecasts, alternative futures exploration, analysis and feedback to produce or alter plans and actions of the organization. Scenario planning plays a prominent role in strategic foresight.

Technology forecasting

Technology forecasting attempts to predict the future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or techniques. Researchers create technology forecasts based on past experience and current technological developments. Like other forecasts, technology forecasting can be helpful for both public and private organizations to make smart decisions. By analyzing future opportunities and threats, the forecaster can improve decisions in order to achieve maximum benefits.

Technology scouting

Technology scouting is an element of technology management in which (1) emerging technologies are identified, (2) technology related information is channeled into an organization, and (3) supports the acquisition of technologies. It is a starting point of a long term and interactive matching process between external technologies and internal requirements of an existing organization for strategic purposes. This matching may also be aided by technology roadmapping.

Ecosystem Scenarios as Environmental Futures - Implications for Participatory Framework Designs Integrating Social Capital Formation and Natural Capital Preservation

Charlotte Gisèle Weil

In integrated ecosystem assessment projects, scenarios provide alternative images of environmental futures as orientation knowledge for opinion-forming and decision-making. Participatory scenario frameworks provide the methodological basis for ecosystem sc ...

Tamsui2023

This thesis assesses the surveillance operated on the mobile phone network by governmental actors (intelligence agencies, police, army) and the relationship between monitored spaces and their users. Indeed, some new surveillance devices used by intelligenc ...

EPFL2022

Coupling remote sensing and particle tracking to estimate trajectories in large water bodies

Tamar Kohn, Alfred Johny Wüest, Damien Bouffard, Chaojie Li

Propelled by the rapid development of equipment, technology and computational power, the monitoring and simulation of the hydrodynamics in lakes have steadily advanced. In contrast, water quality simulations are more difficult to implement, due to the diff ...

Elsevier2022

Covers the basics of Excel data analysis and forecasting techniques.

Explores the definitions of scenarios and strategies in modeling energy systems and discusses different types of scenarios and their evaluation.

Covers the processing of data from a chemical experiment using Excel.