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Technology Horizon Scanning
To mitigate technological surprise, the United States Department of Defense (DOD) mathematically analyzes a range of possible permutations of technology advances. "Technological Horizon Scanning," as it is known, assumes that the greater the distance between any two fields – say, computational quantum mechanics and weather risk indexing – the more unlikely their combination and the larger the impact of a possible fusion.
By aggregating and visualizing forecasts and drawing from over a 100,000 sources a day, Recorded Future helped DOD quickly narrow the scope of its verification as well as to indicate a necessary adjustment of methodology. Instead of creating possible technological permutations, DOD could compare predictions and track the creation of a new discipline.
Type of content:
Assets
Type of asset:
Use case
Big data potential
Yes
Policy domains:
Innovation, Science & Technology
Phase in the policy cycle:
Policy Design and Analysis
Open license availability
No
Ease of use
High
Tags:
Smart City
Smart Government
Strategic planning
Addresses:
| SWOT Analysis for Technology Horizon Scanning |
||
|---|---|---|
| Helpful | Harmful | |
Internal |
Strengths• To mitigate technological surprise, mathematically analyses a range of possible permutations of technology advances. • Assumes that the greater the distance between any two fields, the more unlikely their combination and the larger the impact of a possible fusion. • Using a robust statistical clustering, their methodology helps identify pairs of topical candidates for examination. • Each technology is disassembled to its various components and those elements are analysed "against" one another. Through a series of conjectures, which accounts for their disparate and distance from one another, permutations are evaluated and ranked. • World’s first temporal analytics engine • Recorded Future’s temporal analytics engine can test the validity of its evidence-based futures |
Weaknesses• The system itself will not determine whether a technology is likely to be disruptive. In the end, people will have to look over the data presented to determine what inventions could make the big differences. • Avoiding confirmation bias proved difficult when assessing technological development on decades-long time horizons • Identifying precursors, before the use of analytical software, to nominate technological areas as potentially emerging • The science is not as mature as expected hence, other evaluations and game plans are necessary. |
External |
Opportunities• Recorded Future enabled analysts to anticipate, identify, and prepare for beyond-the-horizon advancements • Allows to rapidly disaggregate new from changing technology • The capabilities these projects seek to detect might be outside the defence realm or might have been previously considered too immature to have much relevance to the technical landscape • Discover the preconditions for technologies to become viable and whether data is available to clue into that. |
Threats• The science is not as mature as expected hence, other evaluations and game plans are necessary |
