Publisher's Synopsis
We often make decisions based on incomplete information with ramifications that extend decades into the future. Public policy decisions, such as removing the root causes of terrorism, may have consequences that extend decades into the future and even beyond our lifetimes. Scenario analysis has been used through much of RAND's five decades as a means to break through the limits to thinking about the unknown. The authors show how the creative use of new information technology will increasingly allow the common-sense notion of long-term planning without predictions to be applied with analytical rigot to the most serious challenges facing humankind. The authors examine traditional methods and discuss new tools and methods available to increase the power of longer-term policy analysis. These new methods are used in an illustrative case study which utilizes a simple model and data set; the authors also discuss how their method may be extended to more realistic, real-world cases. This book will interest all those involved in future assessment, longer-term planning and analysis, and research methodologies.
