Pointers to some future studies pages

Author:  Sakari Mattila, sam@isd.canberra.edu.au /A >
Updated: 11-Nov-2008  (experimental)

• Organisations

  • World Future Society
  • International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
  • OECD International Futures Programme
  • Hawaii Research Center for Future Studies
  • North Shore Institute for Future Studies - convergence of science, technology and society
  • The Club of Rome
  • World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF)
  • The Millennium Project, American Council for the United Nations University
  • Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research
  • Finnish Society for Future Studies
  • Finland Futures Research Centre at Turku School of Economics and Business Administration
  • Strategic Futures International
  • The Economist Intelligence Unit (EUI) - economic analyses
  • WFS directory of futures consultants

• Published future studies, references and databases

  • Future Trends 5 - a selected abstracts collection on a CDROM and full texts, more than 8500 texts and a search engine (OECD)
  • OECD online bookshop - several future studies -related books, like The Future of the Global Economy
  • EIU Country Data - history and five year forecast for countries; see also the description of still more detailed EIU CountryData -- EIU and Bureau van Dijk database
  • 2020 Vision - a future study for Bristish industry
  • RAAF (Australia) future studies
  • U.S. Air Force future studies
  • EPA global warming study
  • Scenarios Europe 2010 - five possible futures for Europe - This project is still going on
  • The social and political impacts of the information society

• Major policy studies

  • Russian Central and East European Studies Center at Rutgers
  • European Policy Forum

• Visionaries

  • Robert Theobald

• Links to other sources of information

  • G. T. Kurian: The Encyclopedia of the Future, ISBN: 0028972058 (1995)
  • The Encyclopedia of the Future - a review
  • Future Survey, monthly abstracts about future
  • Plausible Futures, a good collection of future related pointers
  • Futurist Organization Links
  • Neumann Library - Future Studies Links
  • Links to the Future, well organised links, but last updated Jan. 1998
  • Future Technology Research
  • Jupiter Communications - What's New in Research
  • Futureweb
  • SciMedNet
  • Future Development
  • ForecastCenter.com - good collection of links
  • Horizon, future of education
  • Finland Futures Research Centre links to future research and journals
  • Visionology conference in Belfast, from 18th to 29th May, 1999, University of Ulster
  • Resources for Economists on the Internet by American Economic Association - an extensive, well organised list of links, several about economic forecasting
  • CTC Book List for 2000
  • Books on next 20 years (Ziff-Davis)
  • Jerome C. Glenn (ed.): Futures Research Methodology. ISBN 0-9657362-2-9, a CD-ROM with 500 pages of text

The art of future studies

There is quite a collection of methods for future studies (Tydeman 1987, Vapaavuori 1993). The grouping of methods below is only one opinion.

1. Extrapolation from current situation and history

   These methods only look at a few variables at a time.

   • Utopic methods, future will follow best trends (Malaska 1993)
   • Dystopic methods, future will follow worst trends (Malaska 1993)
   • Analogic methods, future will repeat patterns of past events (Grübler 1997)
   • Trend analysis, future will reveal small trends currently going on somewhere and these will become the mainstream (Naisbitt 1982)
   • Evolution analysis, there are alternative futures like branches of a tree, but only one will really happen
   • Extrapolation using mathematical formula or simple rules (Clarke 1997), this includes straight-line predictions

2. System models or cybernetic models

   These methods take several, maybe tens of thousands variables into account.

   • Simulations (Forrester 1968)
   • Mathematical methods, calculations (Ashby 1956, Isomäki 1998)
   • Process identification ( http://www.isa.cie.uva.es/~jm/docai.htm), (Bunge 1967)
   • Cross-effect analysis (Seppälä 1993)

3. Combining individual visions and knowledge

   These methods combine visions and knowledge from several persons, often iterative way.

   • Delphi method (Linstone and Turoff 1975), expensive methods, proper selection of the panel may be a problem
   • Hermeneutic method (Seppälä 1993)
   • Scenarios (Meristö 1993)
   • Expert interviews (Hukkinen 1993), the interviewer is the key element in this method
   • Brainstorming
   • Strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis
   • Knowledge discovery (AAAI), also known as data mining and by several other names
   • Bayesian networks with expert knowledge, old but viable methods of predicting risks, has wider applications