Tag Archives: issue

Twylah: another tool to add to your scanning and monitoring arsenal

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If you are using Twitter as one of your favourite social network for scanning and monitoring, then it is worth the while adding Twylah to the array of webtools you can use. On a beautifully designed webpage, it will display the trending keywords related to your tweets, automatically identified, as well as your tweets sorted according to those categories. You can also, of course, have a look at what your favourite political leaders, media and sources see as crucial by consulting their Twylah pages.

At a glance you can thus:

  • See which signals you are following most, those that constitute themes, issues and start becoming or continue being problems. You can even discover that you are monitoring issues you had not thought about.
  • For those issues and problems singled out, you can get a broad, “at a glance” estimate of their more recent potential escalation or stabilisation, as by clicking on a “trend” you see a historical list of your last twenty (or so) tweets. More tweets would be better, but twenty gives you already an idea.
  • Identify new related issues and potential spill-over by browsing through the historical content related to one category.
  • Last but not least, estimate what you are tweeting about, if you are forgetting issues or problems, reflect upon potential biases that are creeping up.

Finally, the impeccable design of Twylah makes it a beautiful product to deliver the result of this specific part of your scanning and monitoring.

The major flaw, compared with an ideal scanning and monitoring, as with Paper.Li and most similar curation platforms, is the impossibility to add your own short analysis for a category/trend – when seen as issue – or for a tweet – when seen as signal or indication. It is yet worth the while using it, would it be for yourself.

Horizon Scanning and Monitoring for Anticipation: Definition and Practice

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Horizon scanning is a term that appeared in the early years of the 21st century and is not well-defined, being at once a tool part of the whole foresight process and a way to label this entire process (Habbeger, 2009).* We shall here consider horizon scanning as a specific tool and contrast it to monitoring, in a practical way, i.e. trying to devise the best way to accomplish each task for the best possible foresight and warning, stressing difficulties and challenges and possible ways to move forward. The scans and monitoring done here (or forthcoming), within the framework of Red (team) Analysis, are at once samples of applied methodology, ensuring coherence between reflection and practice and real tools on real-life issues.

Horizon scanning and monitoring: definitions

Horizon Scanning

Meteorological Service of Canada (Environment Canada): Non meteorological data from weather echos can be filtered by using Doppler velocities of targets. After cleaning, only real precipitation is left.

Scanning allows for the identification of potential new themes or meta-issues and issues, that will then need to be analysed in-depth. Horizon scanning looks thus for weak signals indicating the emergence of new meta-issues and issues. A scan must adopt the largest possible scope for the core question under watch.

The idea of horizon scanning is built upon older ideas and methods such as “environmental scanning,” “strategic foresight” and “indications and warning” (also labelled “strategic warning” and “warning intelligence” see Grabo, 2004). Actually, as underlined by Glenn and Gordon, “’environmental scanning’ is the term most futurists used in the 1960-1970s, but as the environmental movement grew, some thought the term might only refer to systems to monitor changes in the natural environment due to human actions.  To avoid this confusion, some have called them ‘Futures Scanning Systems’, ‘Early Warning Systems’ and ‘Futures Intelligence Systems’.” ‘Strategic warning’ and related terms are  used notably by the military to avoid strategic surprises (e.g. Pearl Harbour).

Horizon scanning was notably popularised (to a point as the whole anticipation field is still largely known only to specialists) by its use in the denomination of various governments’ offices, such as the UK Horizon Scanning Centre created in 2004 after a call for developing such centres of excellence across government (Habbeger, 2009, p.14), or Singapore’s Risk Assessment and Horizon Scanning programme, launched in 2005 (Lavoix, 2010). The way the idea was made fashionable also contributed to the confusion surrounding its meaning.

Monitoring

Monitoring is part of the strategic warning process. It is well documented in the literature on intelligence, warning and strategic surprise as it has been formally practised since at least WWII and as intelligence studies are now a constituted body of knowledge and a discipline. For more readings, one shall consult the bibliography of reference on intelligence related matters, J. Ransom Clark’s Bibliography on the Literature of Intelligence, notably the section on strategic warning.

Monitoring issues will allow for the identification of warning problems. Surveillance of those problems will then be done through adequate models and related indicators. If we use the example of energy as meta-issue, then issues could be “oil security,” “peak oil,” “peak uranium,” “the volatility of oil prices,” “the politics of energy between Europe and Russia,” and problems the more specific “Gasprom policies,” “the Keystone pipeline,” etc…

Both monitoring and surveillance lead the collection of necessary information, as defined by the model and related indicators.

Scanning and monitoring in practice

Here our main scan is The Red (team) Analysis Weekly (in short The Weekly) and it is focused upon national security in its largest understanding.* It is one of the device through which new emerging issues that must be put on a watch are identified. The Sigils are both specific scans and monitoring of issues.

In practice, scanning may be seen as included in monitoring and most of the time the same process and the same tools may be used for scanning and for the first steps of monitoring.

First, although a scan is the first step of any analysis, and thus assumes that no understanding or little understanding of the question exists, actually this is only an appearance. Try to make the exercise mentally: if you start looking for something, even in the loosest way, to do that you need to have an idea, even minimal, of what you are looking for. What happens is that, unconsciously, you rely on a cognitive model. This cognitive model is implicit. Thus, to scan the horizon you already use a model, even if it is a very imperfect one. Monitoring is also grounded in a model, but one that has been made explicit, that has been improved and refined through the process of analysis. Thus both horizon scanning and monitoring are similar. Their difference, here, resides actually in the sophistication of the model used, not in the actual process utilised to do scanning or the first steps of the monitoring. Hence, scanning and monitoring can utilise most often the same of tool or support.

Second, the definition of a scan suggests that it should only identify weak signals. However, to select beforehand signals according to their strength – assuming this is possible – would be counter-productive and in some cases impossible. Indeed, a strong signal for an issue can also, sometimes, be a weak signal of emergence for something else. Thus, when gathering signals through a scan that aims at identifying emerging meta-issues and issues, it is desirable to be as broad and encompassing as possible. Similarly, monitoring of an issue and surveillance of a problem may also pick upon signals of novel issues emerging.

Image by Jens Langner (http://www.jens-langner.de/) (Own work), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Last but not least, because of various biases, both analysts and clients, decision-makers and policy-makers are often unable to see, identify, and consider some signals “below the horizon.” They will be able to accept those signals only when they are “above the horizon,” which means when they are much stronger, as exemplified in the post on timeliness. The position of the signal below or above the horizon, or the needed strength of the signal to be seen and accepted will vary according to person. It is thus not practically desirable to try sorting out signals according to their strength too early in the process.

In the case of monitoring and surveillance, it is crucial to also sort the indications according to a timeline that warns us of the evolution of the issue under watch, and that will allow for the warning and its delivery (note that the tools used here do not allow for this timeline to appear explicitly. However, at least mentally, each indication or signal, or group of indications and signals may be positioned on their corresponding timelines – a plural is used as indications and signals can feed into different dynamics for various issues).

Is this a sufficient reason to definitely separate scanning and monitoring? The strength of a signal in horizon scanning may be seen as nothing else that an indication of the movement of change on a timeline: if the signal is weak, then the situation is far from the actual occurrence of an event or phenomenon, if the signal is strong then one is close to it. A scan would thus be an instance of monitoring, where only indications leading to judgements according to which an event will not happen soon but nevertheless deserve to be put under watch are selected. However, as we saw that it is not desirable or possible to sieve through signals according to their strength, then the latter vision of a scan is idealistic and impractical.

Practically, at the end of the process, a scan will thus gives us signals of varying strength. It thus corresponds to the first stage of monitoring (and surveillance) before judgements related to the signification of the signal or indication in terms of timelines are made.

I really welcome comments and exchanges on your experience, as through dialogue we shall be able to accelerate progress towards better practice.

* The debate on national security is rich and features many authors. For a brief summary and references to the many outstanding scholars who inform it, see, among others, Helene Lavoix “Enabling Security for the 21st Century: Intelligence & Strategic Foresight and Warning,” RSIS Working Paper No. 207, August 2010.

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References

Gordon, Theodore J. and Jerome C. Glenn, “ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING,” The Millennium Project: Futures Research Methodology, Version 3.0, Ed. Jerome C. Glenn and Theodore J. 2009, Chapter 2.

Grabo, Cynthia M., Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, edited by Jan Goldman, (Lanham MD: University Press of America, May 2004).

Habbegger, Beat,  Horizon Scanning in Government: Concept, Country Experiences, and Models for Switzerland,    Center    for    Security    Studies    (CSS),    ETH    Zurich,    2009.

J. Ransom Clark’s Bibliography on the Literature of Intelligence.

Lavoix, Helene, What makes foresight actionable: the cases of Singapore and Finland. (U.S. Department of State commissioned report, December 2010).

Lavoix, Helene, “Enabling Security for the 21st Century: Intelligence & Strategic Foresight and Warning,” RSIS Working Paper No. 207, August 2010.

The Deep-Sea Resources Sigils

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The Deep-Sea 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. They use Paper.Li as curation platform.

Why deep-sea resources must be monitored and what is at stake can be found in the corresponding Sigils Brief.

The Deep-Sea Resources Sigils can be read below or by clicking on the title to access the Paper.li platform (best for mobiles and tablets).


The Deep-Sea Resources Sigils Brief

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Why a Sigils focused on Deep-Sea Resources?

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.*

World Bank – Global Economic Prospects January 2012 – Commodity Annex

As has now been known since the end of the nineteenth century (Ifremer, les Nodules, 2012), mineral resources lie on the seabed, and the rising price of commodities, symptom of the current trial, as well as technological progress, make them increasingly attractive.

Actually, following the Ifremer categorisation, three types of resources – energetic resources, marine minerals and biological resources – are located on the seafloor, sea floor, ocean floor or seabed.

Political and international rule over and organisation of the seafloor

The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS 1982) and the 1994 Agreement on Implementation consider all marine “solid, liquid or gaseous mineral resources,” (UNCLOS 1994) “in an International Area beyond the outer limits of the continental shelf,” as the “common heritage of mankind.” (Rona 2003, UNCLOS 1982). This notably led to the creation of the International Seabed Authority (ISA).

However, within the limit of the continental shelf, marine minerals, as other resources, are under the sovereignty of countries, according to international laws:

“Each coastal State has a continental shelf that is comprised of the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nm from its baselines where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance (or out to a maritime boundary with another coastal State).
Wherever the outer edge of a coastal State’s continental margin extends beyond 200 nm from its baselines, it may establish the outer limit of its continental shelf in accordance with Article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. The portion of a coastal State’s continental shelf that lies beyond the 200 nm limit is often called the extended continental shelf. A coastal State has sovereign rights and exclusive jurisdiction over its continental shelf for the purpose of exploring it and exploiting its natural resources…” (NOAA )

According to the nomenclature used by ISA (Technical Study 1), the extended continental shelf is constituted of Extended Continental Legal Shelf regions (ECLS), represented by 45 numbered areas shared among fifty-five regions, including the Antarctica. Most states had to lodge a submission for claim over their extended continental shelf by 13 May 2009. By 1st December 2009, 44 states had lodged 51 submissions and 40 states had submitted 44 Preliminary Information Documents, indicating the intended date of making a submission (UNEP/GRID-Arendal, 2009). Canada, for its part, will only lodge its submission “to the Commission by the end of 2013.” Although the U.S. has not signed the UNCLOS (1982), and signed but not ratified the 1994 Agreement, and although debate on this matter is recurrent within the U.S, notably before elections, it is nevertheless trying to define its extended continental shelf as is explained by the U.S. Extended Continental Shelf Project, which also shows how complex the process is. The legal status of the Antarctica remains frozen (UNEP/GRID-Arendal, 2009).

Continental Shelf: The Last Maritime Zone, p.17, Published by UNEP/GRID-Arendal Copyright © 2009, UNEP/GRID-Arendal

Once all claims are submitted, examined and settled, which will not happen before May 2019, considering the remaining existing deadlines for submission and the uncertainty regarding the U.S., the geopolitical map of the world will be substantially redrawn, as may be expected from the figure above.

Now we understand who has jurisdiction over the sea floor, let us see what lies there, according to current knowledge. We are still in a phase of multiple exploration as much in terms of ecosystem as for referencing and locating the various resources themselves, including the minerals.

What are deep-sea resources?

Ecosystems and deep-sea biological life

An ongoing effort is taking place that allows us to start knowing and understanding the deep-sea marine ecosystem and biological life. It gives new database such as, for example, CenSeam: a Global Census of Marine Life on Seamounts and Seamountsonline. Much is still, however, unknown, and discoveries are made almost everyday. For example, Ifremer, official contractor of ISA for seabed exploration conducted from March to May 2012 the BIONOD (biodiversity and nodule) campaign that aims at creating a strategy to preserve deep-sea biodiversity in areas where polymetallic nodules are present.

According to Ifremer (9 janvier et 24 fevrier 2012), biological resources can be classified as follows:

  • Deep-sea fish: new types of fish could be fished and used for human diet;
  • Micro-organisms (hydrothermal vents): useful for biotechnology.

Marine Mineral Deposits

James R. Hein, Potential deep-ocean metal resources – slide 8 – in Rare Earth Elements’ Presentation, 2012

To date, the known and referenced marine mineral deposits are as follows (from Hein 2012, presentations, except if specified otherwise):

  • “Manganese (or polymetallic) nodules (formed on the vast deep-water abyssal plains)”.
    Contain manganese and iron oxides, significant amounts of nickel and copper; rare metals such as Lithium, Molybdenium, Zirconium; rare earth elements.
  • “Ferromanganese crusts (formed on 100.000 seamounts)”.
    Cobalt, Nickel, Manganese; rare metals such as Bismuth, Niobium, Molybdenium, Platinum, Tellurium, Thorium, Zirconium; rare earth elements.
  • “Seafloor massive sulfides (formed at hydrothermal vents along 89000km ridges)”.
    Rich in Copper, Zinc, Lead, Barium, Silver, Gold, and other rare metals, such as Antimony, Cadmium, Gallium, Germanium, Indium, Selenium. The quality and quantity are often vastly superior to land-based deposits (considering current rate of depletion).
  • Marine Phosphorite (seamount deposits, insular and lagoonal deposits, shelf deposits, epicontinental-sea deposits).
    Pure phosphorite, minor phosphate minerals, may also include rare earth elements (seamount phosphorite deposits).
  • Diamonds: those are already mined off Namibia and adjacent South African coast, notably by De Beers Marine (ISA brochures). According to Ifremer (janvier 2012), 50% of the company’s production is marine and De Beers has started the deep sea exploitation.
  • Placers (sediments): tin, gold, platinum, titanium. According to Ifremer (janvier 2012), 7% of the world tin production is marine and done mainly by Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.

In the deep ocean (below 2000 meters), the three first types of deposits are the most important (Ifremer).

Energetic Resources

  • Deep-sea oil (below 2000 meters): technical challenges must still be faced for both exploration and exploitation (Ifremer, 23 février 2012).
  • Methyl hydrates: “a mixture of natural gas and water compressed into a solid by the cold and high pressures of the deep ocean floor in undersea basins of the continental margins” (ISA brochure). Their estimation is still very uncertain. Their exploitation could lead to very serious dangers in terms of climate change with release of large quantity of methane, and other environmental damages, such as marine landslides and unbalancing of the ecosystem. Ways to completely overcome those dangers must be found before any exploitation starts. (Ifremer, 23 février 2012).

  • Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion.

Where are deep-sea resources located?

Since, in 2003, Peter Rona underlined that “We possess only a preliminary knowledge of their [marine minerals] diversity and distribution… The continental margins of whole continents remain to be explored. Less than 5% of the sea floor is known in sufficient detail to find hydrothermal mineral deposits at and away from plate boundaries,” we have now improved our knowledge. Exploration has progressed, and here is a current map of resources on the seabed, thanks to the great public interactive mapping website by the International Seabed Authority (ISA).

Estimates of deep-sea resources’ value

In 2000, the ISA estimated the potential of eight non-living resource (including oil & gas and gas hydrates) within the Extended Legal Continental Shelf regions (ECLS) worldwide to USD 11934 trillions (June 2000 commodity prices. To give an element of comparison, the price of copper (Cu) was 1739USD/mtu in June 2000, and 8289/mtu in April 2012. The World Bank forecasts (and others, e.g. Suplacz, 2012; Bloomsbury Minerals Economics), see, however, a coming decrease in the price of copper that should nevertheless remain above a low in 2018 at 5500USD/mtu).

When will deep-sea resources be available and with which likelihood?

Currently, if patents of exploitation for deep-sea mineral mining have been granted, the most advanced project is Solwara 1, in the Bismarck Sea in Papua New Guinea. The mining lease has been granted to the Canadian Company Nautilus Minerals. Exploitation is expected to start “by the end of 2013 with the mining of ‘high grade’ Seafloor Massive Sulphide deposits that contain copper, gold, silver, zinc and lead” (ISA newsletter, Issue 8 – June 2011). This project is criticised on environmental grounds, see, for example, Solwaramining.org.

Actually, there is no easy and straightforward answer to a “when will deep-sea resources be exploited.” Ifremer (FAQ) sees the time-line for the exploitation of nodules (logic that can be applied to other resources), as depending upon four variables:

  1. solving technical and environmental problems;
  2. commodity prices (and the need for some stability);
  3. increased industrial growth;
  4. clarification of law-related problems.

The first variable is definitely crucial. As for the second one, if commodity prices are most likely to increase, it is, however, unlikely that they stabilise, considering the current resources order. A stability of prices is wishful thinking. We might thus change the Ifremer variable for an anticipation of unmet needs through current land deposits within a coherent time-frame, which thus links this variable to a detailed foresight study of supply and demand, and thus of the whole economic, financial and political (the future of governance) situation. From there, prices could be deducted, but also, we could break free of the dictatorship of profit and come back to more fundamental notions such as real needs. The second cluster of variables would also cover the third Ifremer variable. Meanwhile the future of governance will most probably have bearings on the legal imperative.

The likelihood will be dependent upon the same variables (conditional probabilities) and would need to be precisely estimated through a Bayesian Network. Once more, this pleads for an approach done through mapping.

Without such in-depth studies, it is impossible to deliver a judgement on time-line and likelihood with high confidence (using the system of the US IC assessments). However, we may provide likelihood and timeline estimates with moderate confidence.

Annex, p.13. Extract – Global Water Security INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT ICA 2012-08, 2 February 2012

Short of a complete collapse of our civilisation, to date, we can estimate that, considering the resourcefulness, imagination and creativity of human beings, their genius in overcoming challenges and finding solutions, it is very likely (using again the system and language of the US IC assessments) that deep-sea resources will be used, and likely that they will be used in the proper ecological way.

Exploitation within non problematic ECLS under state’s sovereign jurisdiction can be estimated to start within 5 to 10 years, as the current multidimensional crisis could also prompt renewed emphasis on search for new solutions. Novel elements and data can alter this time-line considerably.


The graph below shows a graphical summary of the assessment resulting from this brief.

In conclusion

Once the new geopolitical map of the world is redrawn to include the seabed, and once exploration is completed, the potential relative power position of countries will change, as much in terms of resources endowment as in terms of being or rather becoming ecosystem guardians, with all the responsibilities and multi-faceted tensions that may be born of the emergence of such new roles. Furthermore, new elements of solutions to the current global challenge related to resources as well as to the way to proceed when global governance is needed for global commons may be found here, in the deep-sea resources and related underlying dynamics.

For all these reasons, as well as to overcome the uncertainty on likelihood, time-frame, and still lack of understanding on ecosystems, it is important and even crucial to monitor development in the field of deep-sea resources, which may well be one of the most important strategic global issues of the future. This monitoring will be done with the Deep-Sea Resources Sigils.

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* Incidentally, there may be a fundamental contradiction to a sustainable approach when we transform everything into “resources,” if this term is solely understood as factor of production. The etymology of “resource” -”means of supplying a want or deficiency” – may be less dangerous. Using the newer ecosystem services nomenclature is hardly better, as, again, everything tends to be viewed into trading and consumerist terms. For want of another satisfactory term that would be universally understood, I shall use here the term of resources, but bearing in mind its shortcomings.

References

Ben-Gal I., Bayesian Networks, in Ruggeri F., Faltin F. & Kenett R., Encyclopedia of Statistics in Quality & Reliability, Wiley & Sons (2007).

Bloomsbury Minerals Economics (BME), update of “The Short-, Medium- and Long-term Outlook for the Price of Copper” – summary – (date?).

Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, Canada’s Extended Continental Shelf, Overview, 17 October 2011.

Hein, James R. “Overview of the mineral resources of the Area,” Presentation, and “Rare Earth Elements,” Presentation, Sensitisation Seminar On The Work Of The International Seabed Authority And Current Issues Relating To Deep Seabed Mining, United Nations Headquarters, New York, 16 February 2012

Ifremer, “Campagne BIONOD : les champs de nodules à l’étude dans le Pacifique nord-est,” 23/03/2012.

Ifremer, Des éléments de réponses à ces différentes questions, 23 février 2012.

Ifremer, Les hydrocarbures sous-marins, Les hydrates de gaz naturel, 23 février 2012.

Ifremer, Les Nodules, 24 février 2012.

Ifremer, Les ressources biologiques; La pêche profonde; Les applications en biotechnologie; 9 janvier et 24 février 2012.

Ifremer, Les ressources minérales, 9 janvier 2012.

International Copper Study Group.

International Seabed Authority (ISA)

ISA, Global non-living resources on the extended continental shelf: Prospects at the year 2000. Technical Study: No.1.

ISA, Marine Mineral Resources, brochures.

Marine et Oceans,”L’Ifremer étudie les champs de nodules polymétalliques,” 23 Mai 2012

Mero, J. L. The Mineral Resources of the Sea, (Elsevier, Amsterdam, 1965).

Suplacz, Jaroslaw, “Copper Price Forecast, The Fall of The Chinese Miracle 2012,” The Market Oracle, Feb 15, 2012.

UNEP/GRID-Arendal, Continental Shelf: The Last Maritime Zone, 2009.

World Bank – Global Economic Prospects January 2012 – Commodity Annex

The Water Sigils

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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 title to access the Paper.li platform or directly below.

global water security, horizon scanning

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Image: Shui (Eau) Sigil by Diderot, GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license via Wikimedia Commons.


The Sigils

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Sigils(updated 1 February 2013) - The Sigils are a series of daily papers, in the making, that will scan 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, as The Weekly. However, compared with the latter, they are raw material, i.e. not edited.

The issues or problems that will lead to the creation of specific Sigils are either already known as strategic foresight and warning issues or identified through The Weekly and The Chronicles of Everstate. As the various Sigils are developed, they will be added in this section. They can either be read directly on Paper.Li, or, when available, in a specific post that will automatically update everyday.

A few days are usually necessary to test the keywords used before each scan truly reaches its potential.

SF&W issues

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What is an Issue in terms of Strategic Foresight & Warning or Horizon Scanning?

An issue, in terms of warning and by extension SF&W, is “a situation, an objective, an opportunity, a danger, a threat or a risk, which is specific and defined.” (Grabo, 2004)

For example, SF&W issues can be international wars, fragile states, instability, energy security, oil, economic crisis, new opposition nexus, global water security, etc.

An issue can be explored through foresight. During the warning process, it will be monitored, usually thanks to indicators based on models. The analyst will assess its potential developments (obtain a judgment on the future).

Monitoring issues will allow for the identification of warning problems, which will then be surveilled through adequate models and related indicators. If we use the example of energy as meta-issue, then issues could be “oil security,” “peak oil,” “peak uranium,” “the volatility of oil prices,” “coal security,” “the politics of energy between Europe and Russia,” and problems the more specific “Gasprom policies,” “the Keystone pipeline,” etc… If we look at resources as meta-issue, then deep-sea resources security is one of the issues.

Both monitoring and surveillance lead the collection of necessary information, as defined by the model and related indicators.

References

Grabo, Cynthia M., Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning, edited by Jan Goldman, (Lanham MD: University Press of America, May 2004).

Revisiting timeliness for Strategic Foresight and Warning

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To exist, foresight products as well as warnings must be delivered to those who must act upon them, the customers, clients or users. Furthermore, they must be provided in a timely fashion. This criterion of timeliness is extremely important. It means that customers or users will have enough time to decide and then implement any necessary course of action as warranted by foresight.

Timeliness: enabling the coordination of response

Timely reflections (Image by Stanley Howe – CC-BY-SA-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Most often, the challenge of timeliness is thus understood as stemming from the need to conciliate on the one hand the dynamics which are specific to the issue, object of anticipation, and on the other the related decision and coordination of the response.

Let us take the example of Peak Oil, i.e. the date when “world oil production will reach a maximum – a peak – after which production will decline” (Hirsch, 2005, 11) which implies the end of a widespread availability of cheap (conventional crude) oil. The phenomenon is now well documented and relatively widely recognized, from scientists’ reports, associations, institutions and books (see, for example, the creation of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil & Gas in 2000 , Robert Hirsch report (2005), the Institut Français du Pétrole (IFP), Thomas Homer Dixon, Michael Klare or Jeff Rubin), to web resources such as The Oil Drum or Energy Bulletin to finally the International Energy Agency (IEA – it recognised the peaking of Peak Oil in 2010, e.g. Staniford, 2010), despite still some resistance by a shrinking number of actors.

By azrainman http://flickr.com/photos/azrainman/991225765/ – CC-BY-2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Notwithstanding other impacts, Hirsch estimates that 20 years of a “mitigation crash program before peaking” would have allowed avoiding “a world liquid fuels shortfall” (Hirsch, 2005). Assuming that oil peaked in 2006, as evaluated by the IEA, if we had wanted to have an energy mix of replacement for the now gone cheap oil, then we should have decided implementing and then coordinating a response… back in 1986. Thus SF&W on this issue should have been delivered some time before 1986.

Obviously, this did not happen, even if one starts finding rare articles regarding Peak Oil earlier (e.g. the 1974 miscalculated warning for a global Peak Oil happening in 1995 by M. King Hubbert (Wikipedia ‘Predicting the timing of Peak Oil’) and much later Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” Scientific American, March 1998). Why?

Timeliness, credibility and biases

Jack Davis, writing on strategic warning in the case of US national security, hints at the importance of another criterion linked to timeliness, credibility:

“Analysts must issue a strategic warning far enough in advance of the feared event for US officials to have an opportunity to take protective action, yet with the credibility to motivate them to do so. No mean feat. Waiting for evidence the enemy is at the gate usually fails the timeliness test; prediction of potential crises without hard evidence can fail the credibility test. When analysts are too cautious in estimative judgments on threats, they brook blame for failure to warn. When too aggressive in issuing warnings, they brook criticism for “crying wolf.”

For Davis, credibility is the provision of “hard evidence” to back up foresight. Of course, as we deal with the future, hard evidence will consist in understanding of processes and their dynamics (the model used, preferably an explicit model) added to facts indicating that events are more or less likely to unfold according to this understanding.

Credibility is, however, also something more than hard evidence. To obtain credibility, people must believe you. Hence, biases of the customers, clients or users must be overcome. Thus, whatever the validity of the hard evidence in the eyes of the analyst, it must also be seen as such by others. The various biases that can be an obstacle to this credibility have started being largely documented (e.g. Heuer). Actually, explaining the model used and providing indications, or describing plausible scenarios are ways to overcome some of the biases, notably out-dated cognitive models. Yet, relying only on this scientific logic is insufficient, as shown by Craig Anderson, Mark Lepper, and Lee Ross in their paper “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information.” Thus, other ways to minimize biases must be imagined and included, that will most probably involve time. The possibility to deliver the SF&W product will be accordingly delayed.

Credibility and more broadly overcoming biases are so important that I would go further than Davis and incorporate them within the very idea of timeliness. This would be much closer to the definition of timely, according to which something is “done or occurring at a favourable or useful time; opportune” (Google dictionary result for timely). Indeed there cannot be timely SF&W if those who must act cannot hear it.

If the SF&W product is delivered at the wrong time, then it will be neither heard nor considered, decisions will not be taken nor actions implemented.

More difficult, biases also affect the very capability of analysts to think the world and thus to even start analysing issues. We are there faced with cases of partial or full collective blindness, when timeliness cannot be achieved because SF&W analysis cannot even start in the specific sectors of society where this analysis is meant to be done.

This is most probably what happened for our example of Peak Oil. If a model existed, created by M. King Hubbert, the initial miscalculation led to some loss of credibility as those denying peak oil underlined and still emphasize, even though King Hubbert model was not wrong. Analysts in SF&W in the early 1980s were more preoccupied with the Cold War than concerned by anything else. Afterwards, the system that had won against the Communist world could not even be thought not being perfect. Such highly disturbing threats that could question the prevalent worldview could not be envisioned. Had they been, they would most probably have been discarded first by policy makers then by political leaders. Furthermore, a host of actors had interest in a permanence of the ideological setting, which would have made the possibility to see a very early foresight work on peak oil develop very remote indeed (I am emphasizing here unconscious reactions and “deafness,” not hidden maneuvers).

Timeliness as the intersection of three dynamics

Thus, to summarize timeliness is best seen as the intersection of three dynamics:

  • The dynamics and time of the issue or problem at hand, knowing that, especially when they are about nature, those dynamics will tend to prevail (Elias, 1992)
  • The dynamics of the coordination of the response (including decision)
  • The dynamics of cognition (or evolution of beliefs and awareness) – at collective and individual level – of the actors involved.

To understand each dynamic is, in itself, a challenge. Even more difficult, each dynamic acts upon the others, making it impossible to truly hope to achieve timeliness if the impact of one dynamic on the others is ignored.

For example, if we continue with our initial case of Peak Oil, having been unable to even think the possibility of Peak oil in the early 1980s has dramatically changed the current possible dynamics of the response, while both the cognitive delay and the absence of previous decisions and actions have orientated the dynamics of the issue towards some paths, while others are definitely closed. Any SF&W delivered on this issue now is quite different from what would have been delivered 20 years ago, assuming it could have been heard.

To acknowledge the difficulty of finding the timely moment, and the impossibility to ever practice an ideal SF&W in an imagined world where everyone – at individual and collective level – would have perfect cognition is not to negate SF&W. Answering this challenge with a “what is the point to do it now as we did not do it when things were easy/easier” is childish. On the contrary, fully acknowledging hurdles is to have a more mature attitude regarding who we are as human beings, accepting our shortcomings but also trusting in our creativity and capacity to work to overcome the most difficult challenges. It is to open the door to the possibility to develop strategies and related tools to improve the timeliness of SF&W, thus making it more actionable and efficient:

  • Creating evolving products that will be adapted to the moment of delivery;
  • Using the appearance of groups, communities, even single scholarly or other work on new dangers, threats and opportunities as potential weak signals that are still unthinkable by the majority;
  • Developing and furthering our understanding of the dynamics of cognition and finding ways to act on them or, to the least, to accompany them;
  • Participating fully in the current effort, which has just started within societies, at re-designing decision systems and response capabilities.

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References

Anderson, Craig A., Mark R. Lepper, and Lee Ross, “Perseverance of Social Theories: The Role of Explanation in the Persistence of Discredited Information,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1980, Vol. 39, No.6, 1037-1049.

Campbell, Colin J. and Jean H. Laherrere, “The end of cheap oil,” 
Scientific American, March 1998.

Davis, Jack, “Improving CIA Analytic Performance: Strategic Warning,” The Sherman Kent Center for Intelligence Analysis Occasional Papers: Volume 1, Number 1, accessed September 12, 2011.

Dixon, Thomas Homer, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of civilization, (Knopf, 2006).

Elias, Norbert,  Time: An Essay, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

Hirsch, Robert L., SAIC, Project Leader, Roger Bezdek, MISI, Robert Wendling, MISI Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation & Risk Management, For the U.S. DOE, February 2005.

International Energy Agency (IEA), World Energy Outlook 2010.

Klare, Michael, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum, (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004; paperback, Owl Books, 2005).

Klare, Michael, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated, 2008).

Rubin, Jeff, Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, Random House, 2009.

Staniford, Stuart, “IEA acknowledges peak oil,” Published Nov 10 2010, Energy Bulletin.