TRANSATLANTIC FORESIGHT LAB

The aim of this module, jointly conducted with the Bertelsmann Foundation North America, is to provide impetus and concrete policy proposals to develop and implement new transatlantic approaches to deal with critical dependencies.

The Transatlantic Foresight Lab follows a dual approach: A Transatlantic Expert Group consisting of representatives from think tanks, academia and business on both sides of the Atlantic analyses ongoing political processes, such as the EU-US Trade and Technology Council, and economic interdependencies. On this basis, it develops policy proposals for action. The expert group is flanked by the crowdsourced forecasting platform RANGE (Rethinking Assumptions in a New Geopolitical Environment), which provides forecasts on key issues in transatlantic relations.

Transatlantic Expert Group

The Transatlantic Expert Group identifies vulnerabilities arising from economic dependencies, analyses the consequences for the political capacity for the EU and the US to act, and develops strategies to improve transatlantic cooperation so as to increase mutual resilience. Over the next two years, the group will meet physically in Berlin and Washington, D.C., and also virtually on a regular basis. During its meetings, it will analyse ongoing political processes, such as the Trade and Technology Council (TTC), conduct its own research, publish policy briefs on economic interdependencies, and formulate concrete policy proposals. Furthermore, we plan to integrate the results of the crowdsourced forecasting platform RANGE (Rethinking Assumptions in a New Geopolitical Environment), which provides forecasts on key issues in transatlantic relations, into our work.

Forecasting platform RANGE

RANGE (Rethinking Assumptions in a New Geostrategic Environment) is a crowdsourced forecasting platform focusing on issues such as systemic rivalry with China, climate change, technology, democracy, geopolitics, and trade and economy. It looks at these issues from the perspective of transatlantic relations.

It aims at building a diverse group of forecasters to bring new, timely, accurate and insightful perspectives to analyses and recommendations for policy-makers.

Crowdsourced forecasting is the ongoing collection of forecasts from a larger, heterogeneous group of people (usually in the form of probabilities), in which the individual forecasts are combined into a “crowd” forecast that often produces a more accurate prediction than that of individual experts. Diversity of opinion, independence of members from each other, decentralisation and special perspectives based on experience, expertise or the ability to do research make a good crowd forecast, complemented by the possibility of up-dating the forecast again and again over time.

Crowdsourced forecasting is based on a combination of two different approaches to thinking about the future: scenario planning and probabilistic forecasts. Both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses and are often considered as incompatible due to their different assumptions and goals. They can, however, successfully be combined by developing clusters of questions that provide early, predictive clues of what the future is likely to be. The RANGE platform follows this methodological approach.

We are convinced that policy-makers will find the collective forecasts we generate useful and practically usable. We invite all interested parties to participate as forecasters on the platform. To do so, it is not necessary to forecast on all issues and topics; participation on the platform can be freely tailored to specific areas of interest and your individual willingness to invest time. To get started, simply register at rangeforecasting.org and make your first forecast!

For more information on RANGE and the crowdsourced forecasting method visit:

Blogpost: https://globaleurope.eu/europes-future/introducing-range-how-to-forecast-the-key-issues-determining-transatlantic-relations/

Podcast:  https://wisdom-of-the-crowd.simplecast.com/