This paper discusses a framework for evaluating the effectiveness of technology gaming and other methods used to guide decisions relating to investment of Department of Defense research-and-development resources. The author suggests that technology g...
This paper projects what the world might be like in the year 2018 and the implications for Army doctrine using the metaphor of a molecule affected by lights. A small Delphi exercise in which participants posed yes/no questions about this future worl...
Electric utilities, governmental energy agencies, and some private economic forecasting services make long-term forecasts of electricity and peak demand.
This paper details part of an effort to evaluate Sweden's Secretariat for Futures Studies. The author identifies two basic issues regarding futures studies--their legitimacy, and criteria for evaluating them. The author reviews some of the tenets o...
An introduction to a method for making long-range (10-20 years) forecasts of Soviet strategic weapon developments.
Presents a new methodology for helping members of a group to arrive at carefully reasoned value judgments or decisions. The new procedure, called "qualitative controlled feedback," presents each group member with a common question,...
The Qualitative Controlled Feedback (QCF) method was developed to assist policymakers in forming judgments and making decisions that reflect the interactive reasoning of all members of a group. The QCF method tends to minimize face-to-face group inte...
This report presents an overview of the USAF Total Force Cost Model -- sometimes referred to as the FORCE model -- including its basic purposes and its relationship to the planning and programming process.
The technique of participatory polling was developed for a prototype trial in response to the need for long-range R&D planning requiring the opinions, assumptions, and values of planners and decisionmakers.
Presents methods for collecting and analyzing judgments from groups of experts.
The authors approach the problem by first relating R&D program management objectives to the need for assessment of technological advances, and then discussing procedures for obtaining and analyzing expert judgments on potential advances.
Gaming, including many distinct types of techniques, has been used for thousands of years for many purposes, including the forecasting of man's affairs. Despite its venerability, the activity has many unrecognized and unrealized potentials: ...
What effect does transportation have upon a city's growth? This study addresses the question of how to predict changes in urban form caused by changes in transportation system characteristics. Two primary dimensions of urban form are considered: (1...
Examines major features of changing population distribution and their long-term implications and proposes policies for coping with local and regional effects of redistribution. Features of changing distribution: (1) people vacating extensive portio...
At this early stage in the scientific study of the future for policy purposes, a number of important methodological choices face social scientists.
Only when prediction is linked to policy choices should we speak of futurology or "the science of prediction." An essential but neglected aspect of social forecasting for more than five years ahead is the prediction of what people will want then. P...
This report presents an elementary cross-impact model where the cross-impacts are formulated as relative probabilities. Conditions are derived for the consistency of the matrix of relative probabilities of n events.
Description of a new forecasting model, based on political and technological forecasting techniques, to help decisionmakers identify salient futures for present policy consideration.
A discussion of the requirements for policy-oriented future studies — saliency, credibility, transformability into policymaking inputs, and desirability by the policymaking system.
Discusses the need and the way to study the neglected alternative domestic politics futures. Their sensitivity to ideologies and values, the disdain of some researchers for politics, and the scarcity of methods suitable for identifying, considering,...
A broad view of the traditional operations model, suggesting that any device be accepted as a model if it provides a logical means of predicting and comparing the outcomes of alternative actions, regardless of its representative features or its ...
Notes used as a basis for informal talks on systems analysis, discussing ways of giving analytical support for long-range planning.
A discussion of methods for the systematic exploration of political feasibility concerning policy-oriented predictions.
This paper describes a methodology for predicting development schedules realistically, taking available funds into account.
A suggestion that governmental decisionmaking techniques be reconstructed to include inputs from personnel trained to deal with the future.
A report of philosophical, pragmatic, and methodological changes in world attitude toward the future — all favoring positive long-range planning.
The application of the techniques of the physical sciences to the social sciences, coupled with the increasing capability and refinement of the computer, is presented as a possible method of solving socio-political problems in the future.
The qualitative improvement of societal studies depends upon all-out acceptance of operations-research techniques, adoption of a systems approach as a basic principle, a real effort toward interdisciplinary collaboration.
The methodology suggested in this study includes several extensions to basic technological projection techniques, identification of context in the analysis of the transition from technical feasibility to commercial profitability, and refinements...
An analysis of the possible interaction between predictions and the events about which the predictions are made. The following questions are considered: (1) Is the interaction of prediction and event predictable? (2) Can the interaction of predicti...
A description of the PPB system and its contributions to the planning process. First, it establishes and makes explicit the relationships, or linkages, among the organization's goals, programs, and activities and their resource implications and finan...
An analysis of Project Futuribles, an international venture which operates on the premise that the future is not a given unknown but one of many possible futures.
A discussion of the use of computers in determining the structure of complex systems and in prediction....
A reappraisal of methodology in the social sciences with specific proposals for modifications of traditional procedures. The paper suggests that social scientists explore the possibilities of operations research approaches, of operational model build...
Suggestion for a study to improve research appraisal. Although it may lead to a genuine scientific breakthrough, most research consists of evolutionary extrapolation, and refinement and application of existing technology to new objectives. This pap...
A description of the game-simulation work conducted in RAND's Logistics Systems Laboratory to aid long-range logistics planning in the United States Air Force. The background of these experiments is described, along with the three experiments perform...
A discussion of the applicability of random sampling simulation to the problem of predicting "drift" failures. Drift failures are defined as system malfunctions occurring because the entire system, with its many interdependencies, performs at a level...
An attempt to compare four alternative techniques of forecasting under the hypothesis that all the basic data necessary for each method are available. The errors are examined in each set of projections of industry outputs from 1929 to 1939.
A report on a pilot study of the prediction of social and technological events.
