Strategic Foresight

Strategic foresight can help governments and international organizations prepare for and shape the future. At GPPi, we conduct research on how these and other actors can integrate foresight into their analyses, decision-making and actions. Our futures toolkit includes scenario-based foresight, gaming and policy design methods, anticipation, statistical and algorithmic forecasting, as well as early warning and simulation approaches. By both driving methodological innovation and suggesting ways to overcome the status-quo biases that govern many policy cultures, we want to enable more futures-proof and, ultimately, more robust political decisions.

Study

Making Foresight Count: Success Factors for Futures Analysis in Foreign and Security Policy

Ever wondered how different types of futures analysis could help improve policy processes, and how to implement them successfully? Based on insights from three projects, this study offers inspiration and guidance.

Policy brief

The Power and Limits of Data for Peace

To strengthen its ability to predict violent conflict, the EU should add innovative approaches to its foresight toolbox. Then it must bridge the gap between early warning and preventive action.

Podcast

Krisen von morgen

What are Germany and the EU doing to better predict war & violence? And how can we use today’s data to tell where things will go wrong tomorrow? A 49security podcast.

Working paper

An Agenda for Expanding Forecast-Based Action to Situations of Conflict

Forecast-based humanitarian action enables actors to start their work before a predicted disaster strikes. To save even more lives, anticipatory actions could be expanded to conflict situations. 

By Marie Wagner, Catalina Jaime

Future-Proofing EU Security, Enlargement and Eastern Neighborhood Policies

REUNIR will examine how the EU can strengthen its foreign policy and security toolboxes to bolster the resilience and transformation of (potential) candidate countries in this new age of international relations. GPPi will develop the project’s foresight approach to systematically identify and assess risks of authoritarian foreign influencing in EU candidate countries, and to ensure that recommendations for EU policymakers are robust against a range of plausible scenarios. 

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Experts

Sarah Bressan

Research Fellow

Julian Heiss

Non-Resident Fellow

Marie Wagner

Non-Resident Fellow

Paul Flachenecker

Research Associate

Philipp Rotmann

Director

Lea Marlene Korb

Research Assistant

Gelila Enbaye

Research Associate

Andreas Heinemann-Grüder

Research Fellow

Funding & Contact

For our work on strategic foresight, we have received funding from the European Commission (Horizon Europe), the German Federal Foreign Office, and the Industrieanlagen-Betriebsgesellschaft mbH (IABG).

For more information, please contact Sarah Bressan.


Recent Publications