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News about the Uk Foresight Programme

Issue 4 - April 2004

esight newletter April 04

An exciting week for Foresight, with two of our current projects launching their findings and action plans.

Flood and Coastal Defence - Impacts and responses to climate change

The Future Flooding report launched today looks 30-100 years ahead. It outlines the possible risks for the UK from flooding and coastal erosion, and highlights the decisions that need to be made to protect people, homes, businesses and the environment in the future.

The project has investigated a range of future scenarios, which vary depending on factors such as climate change, GDP growth, economic development and government structure.

In each scenario, if flood management policies remain unchanged, the risk of flooding increases significantly, and the damage could be very costly. Under the most extreme scenario, annual cost of damages could increase 20-fold from the current level. However, it concludes the additional cost of flood damage could be reduced using an integrated portfolio of responses.

Project News

Exploiting the Electromagnetic Spectrum - Linking to the Government's innovation agenda

On 20 April we launched this project, which focused on long-term opportunities for the UK in four specific areas:

  • "Switching to light: all-optical data handling"
  • "Manufacturing with light: photonics at the molecular level"
  • "Inside the wavelength: electromagnetics in the near field"
  • "Picturing people: non-intrusive imaging"

We are developing an action plan for these areas which includes activities to feed into the DTI Technology Strategy. This project has also produced four narrative stories which explore and bring to life aspects of the technological developments identified by this project - these are available along with all the launch documentation on the project's web pages.

Cyber Trust & Crime Prevention - Next generation ICT risks and rewards

Since the beginning of the year we have held a series of workshops which looked at 3 potential visions of the future in 2018 from the perspectives of administration, business and the citizen. The workshops were run by RAND Europe and used gaming techniques which tested the scenarios. The scenarios are part of a process of taking the material generated within the project and putting it into a form that will help decision makers understand the potential societal impacts of new technologies. The workshops brought together key individuals from business, research and government.

An event will be held in the summer to communicate the findings of the project and consequential work which will be taken forward. At that time the various publications which have been commissioned will be published. These include the reviews of state-of-the-art science covering both technology and social science, a Technology Forward Look paper which seeks to summarise the major technology developments anticipated in the next 10-15 years, a report on the scenarios and gaming process and an Executive Summary of the project. Details will be posted on the website.

Brain Science, Addiction and Drugs - Understanding addiction and drugs use

For our newest project, Profs Trevor Robbins, University of Cambridge; Gerry Stimson, Imperial College, London; and David Nutt, University of Bristol, will be the key experts co-ordinating the scientific input. We have held two scoping workshops with around 50 life and social scientists. Outcomes of these workshops will inform the list of topics on which the State of the Science Reviews will focus. These reviews will include work on cultural, social and behavioural aspects of addiction and its treatments as well as scientific and medical developments.

The newly formed project Advisory Group and Stakeholder Group will both be meeting during May.

Cognitive Systems - Linking brain science and computing

The results of the Cognitive Systems project are now leading to actions throughout the community we created. Research into natural and artificial cognitive systems is at an exciting stage: the researchers who took part in the project also agree that there could be great benefits in bringing together the life sciences and physical sciences to consider how they can collectively accelerate progress in cognitive systems. The stakeholder group, chaired by Lord Sainsbury, will be meeting in May to review progress.

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