(Rewritten and revised edition) Horizon scanning and monitoring for warning are part of the family of activities used to foresee the future, anticipate uncertainty and manage risks. Their practice is crucial for successful strategic foresight and warning, risk management, futurism or any anticipatory activity. While monitoring is a generic and common term used for many …
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Strategic Foresight and Warning (SF&W) is at once process and analysis. By SF&W analysis we mean all methodologies and related issues allowing for the development of an understanding grounded in reality that will generate best anticipatory products, useful to decision-makers and policy-makers for carrying out their mission (to find your way within the myriad of labels …
Human societies currently face dwindling resources and rising competition for them in the contemporary “resources order.” Thus, besides and in accordance with other ways to handle this challenge, new types and sources of resources are increasingly valuable and can make a strategic difference for polities, as well as for humanity as a whole. Meanwhile, if we are to ever learn from our worrying present, we must also, continuously, make sure that the extraction and use of those new potential resources will not have any unfavourable impact on the planet and its ecosystem, including this biodiversity to which we belong.* As has now been known since the end of the nineteenth century (Ifremer, les Nodules, 2012), mineral resources lie on the …
In February 2013, the fall of a meteor in Russia’s Urals (e.g. “Meteorite hits Russian Urals: Fireball explosion wreaks havoc, up to 1,200 injured“, RT, 15 Feb 2013), added to the close fly-by of Asteroid 2012 DA14, and to reports of a meteorite sighted over Cuba, reignited a renewed interest for near-earth objects (NEOs), notably because of the threat they may constitute to the earth and its inhabitants. Yet, NEOs are not only about dangers and Armageddon scenarios, they may also well be an opportunity. The possibility to use resources from space also exists and may be seen as a major wild card, which could completely upset most scenarios on resources and energy issues, thus constituting a “grey swan,” to use Taleb’s terminology. From dream …
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The Space Resources Sigils is part of The Sigils, a series of daily papers scanning the horizon for weak signals related to various issues relevant to the security of societies, polities, nations and citizens. An opening article on the importance of space resources as their use should be a reality in the relatively near future (middle of next …
The East Seas Security Sigils aims to allow monitoring easily what is happening in the East Sea (with open source), thus following potential escalation, stabilisation and impacts. Considering the risk of spill-over from one problem onto the other, the East Seas Security Sigils focuses on the potential and actual tensions in the East China Sea, the …
The Deep-Sea Resources Sigils is part of The Sigils, a series of daily scans for weak signals related to various global issues pertaining to political and geopolitical uncertainty. Why deep-sea resources must be monitored and what is at stake can be found in the corresponding Sigils Brief. Read The Deep-Sea Resources Sigils… Featured image: Three-dimensional model of the …
The Coal Sigils, is the first of The Sigils dedicated to energy security, a series of daily papers scanning the horizon for weak signals related to various issues relevant to the security of societies, polities, nations and citizens. Why a Sigils focused on coal? According to a release by the IEA, “As of March 2012, …
The Iran Crisis Sigils, focusing on tensions with Iran and their geostrategic environment, is part of The Sigils, a series of daily papers scanning the horizon for weak signals related to various issues relevant to the security of societies, polities, nations and citizens. They use Paper.Li as curation platform. The Iran Crisis Sigils can be read by …
The Water Sigils, focusing on global water security starts The Sigils, a series of daily papers scanning the horizon for weak signals related to various issues relevant to the security of societies, polities, nations and citizens. They use Paper.Li as curation platform. The Water Sigils can be read by clicking on the image below. ——– …
