The Sigma Scan

The Sigma Scan is a set of 271 brief papers exploring potential future issues and trends over the next 50 years which may have an impact on UK public policy.

To produce the Sigma Scan, the Horizon Scanning Centre has collected 'evidence of the future' from more than 2000 document sources and interviews with 300 leading thinkers. We have condensed this material into 271 short papers designed to challenge assumptions and spark ideas. We use this material in workshops and projects to promote better awareness of different potential futures in government policy-making. You can browse and search these papers at www.sigmascan.org: please let us know what you think of them by writing to horizon.scanning@dius.gsi.gov.uk

In December 2006, the Horizon Scanning Centre published the first version of the Sigma and Delta Scans.

The Sigma Scan explored 146 potential future issues and trends identified by the world's leading horizon scanning sources, including think tanks, academic publications, mainstream media, corporate foresight, strategic thinkers, governments, alternative journals, charities, NGOs, blogs, minority communities, and futurists. The Sigma Scan was developed by the Outsights-Ipsos MORI Partnership (www.outsights.co.uk, www.ipsos-mori.co.uk).

The Delta Scan was a collaborative editorial project run by the Institute for the Future (www.iftf.org), which generated 100 papers looking at potential developments in the field of science and technology over the next 50 years. Contributions to the Delta Scan were made by over 200 science and technology experts from the worlds of government, business, academia and communication.

For the November 2008 release, the Sigma and Delta Scans have been merged. The Delta Scan was originally developed using a different methodology to the Sigma Scan: the existing science and technology futures literature was not considered sufficiently rich to enable generation of the Delta Scan using the 'synthesis' approach adopted in the Sigma Scan, so we sought direct contributions from leading figures in the world of science and technology. When preparing the 2008 release, however, we felt that the separation between S&T and other policy issues implied by the Sigma and Delta names was misleading, and decided to publish all papers under the Sigma Scan name. We hope that this will have the additional benefit of making it easier to browse and search the papers.

For this release, 33 new papers have been drafted, 90 thoroughly reviewed and updated, and 8 merged with other papers or withdrawn. This work has been done with the support of the Outsights-Ipsos MORI partnership.