Part 4 -- Other Sources For Events Information (Mapping The Future)

Over the last several days I have been blogging about the excellent CSIS report called Mapping The Future. In addition, I have been talking about a project my grad students in Intelligence Communications completed that was very similar in scope to the CSIS project. I covered the comparisons and lessons learned for intelligence analysts and for classroom instruction in earlier posts and today I just wanted to wrap up with a list of a few events sites that we found useful:

ElectionGuide. The International Foundation For Electoral Systems maintains an excellent list/guide on presidential and legislative elections worldwide.

When-is. While it is not entirely clear who owns the site, When-is does a very good job of keeping track of various religious holidays, particularly those where the exact date changes from year to year.

ConferenceAlerts. Based out of South Africa, the site keeps track of academic conferences worldwide.

EventsEye. This is a trade show and other business events directory based out of France.

World Events Guide. This site claims to cover all sorts of events but we found it to be best for cultural or entertainment type events.

If you know of a good one I have left out, please post it to the comments!

Related Posts:
Part 1 -- Mapping The Future
Part 2 -- Events From A Geographical Perspective
Part 3 -- Events From A Topical Perspective

Part 3 -- Events From A Topical Perspective (Mapping The Future)

For the last two days, I have been posting about some excellent research that CSIS has done with their Mapping the Future Project and about some equally interesting work my own students have done along those same lines. In both cases, the goal was to look out several years and identify those events, dates and anniversaries that had potential to have significant meaning or produce significant outcomes of national security interest.

In the case of my students, I divided them into two teams. The first team examined the data from a geographical standpoint and the second team, which I will discuss today, looked at events from the standpoint of specific topics of interest (e.g. political events, cultural events, economic events, etc. -- see full list below and don't forget to scroll side to side as well as up and down).



The list here is much more extensive than the one I provided yesterday (or the CSIS list, for that matter) mainly because the students built this one over the course of the term. They have added a good bit more detail and a number of interesting features including the primary source for information on the event and their own evaluation of how, specifically, the event will impact national security (using the US National Security Strategy as a guide for their evaluation criteria).

I have highlighted those events that were in the CSIS list in boldface. Those that were in both the CSIS list and the geographical list from yesterday are in bold and italics. Events just in italics were on the two team's lists but not on the CSIS list. What amazes me is the way the simple change in perspective results in very different lists. I recommend this two team approach to virtually any intel classroom project. It is one thing to say that what you see and how you analyze depends on where you stand; it is another thing to actually experience it.

Tomorrow -- Other Sources For Event Information

Related Posts:
Part 1 -- Mapping The Future
Part 2 -- Events From A Geographical Perspective

Part 2 -- Events From A Geographical Perspective (Mapping The Future)

Yesterday, I posted a link to and comments on CSIS's excellent Mapping The Future project. That project sought to highlight events in the next 5 years that are both relatively certain to happen and should impact our world in varying but significant ways. At the same time, I mentioned that my own students had serendipitously done a similar exercise (only looking out 36 months, however) in my Intelligence Communications class. I divided that class into two teams with one team looking at future events from a geographic perspective and the other team looking at events from a topical (i.e. political, cultural, etc) perspective.

Today, I am posting the results from the geographical team's analysis. What you see below is their top findings (they actually covered a good many more events but I did not have time to type them up) for each of the regions. Note: The boldfaced items are items which were mentioned in both the CSIS report and in the geographical team's report. In addition to the region, the event and the date of the event, I have also included a brief version of their estimate regarding the most important outcome of that event. Obviously, I have tried to capture their bottomlines in the fewest words possible and, if I have failed in my attempt to summarize their findings, the fault is all mine.



The students were particularly taken with the degree to which China will likely be involved in many of these events. In fact, that was their overall finding: "Analysis of events within the next 36 months indicates that China's global power is highly likely to increase...While the economic interests are predominant, political and social elements also underlie these events."

The student's also produced a wall chart using I2's Analyst Notebook. You can download the file here but you will need to have either Analyst's Notebook or I2's free Chart Reader to view it.

Related Posts:
Part 1 -- Mapping The Future

Mapping The Future -- Part 1 (CSIS And Original Research)

While some "crises" are unpredictable, many can be easily foreseen. That is because the crisis is clearly associated with a known event. For example, it is possible to predict, if not the exact size and scope, then at least the high likelihood of anti-globalization protests of some kind at virtually any gathering of world leaders. It is with these thoughts in mind, perhaps, that the Global Strategy Institute at the Center For Strategic And International Studies published a "map" of key future events from 2008-2012 late last year.

The Institute itself claims that its intent was to "help us all elevate our thinking beyond today's headlines and to anticipate the competing obstacles and opportunities we can expect to navigate in the future." The interactive version of the map highlights events in science, politics, conferences, forecasts, construction, sports and other importnat anniversaries and shows where they intersect in time. The pdf version of the map (the screenshot below is taken from that version) shows much the same thing but without the explanations regarding the events.


While this map is very interesting (and worth detailed study), what is even more interesting, to me, at least, is that I gave my graduate students in my Intelligence Communications class much the same assignment back in early March. We did not discover the CSIS map until mid-May and, therefore, they did their study independent of the CSIS study. Their goal was much the same, however: Identify important events where the date could be reasonably well determined, catalog them and then analyze and rank order them with respect to their potential impact on US national security.

What makes this even more interesting is that I do not have just one data set to compare with the CSIS study -- I have two! I divided the class into two sections. One looked at the issue from a purely geographic framework (i.e. they divided up the world by continents and looked at events in each) and the other group divided up the world by topics (such as political, economic, etc) and looked at events from that perspective.

(A couple of notes about the Intelligence Communications class. First, it is not a class about world events. It is a class designed to teach students how to communicate in written and oral forms the results of their intelligence analysis to senior decisionmakers. It is first and foremost a writing and briefing class. In order to give the students something real to write and brief about, however, I pick a new topic each term. Last term, I picked world events. Second, I usually divide the class into two teams and require them to look at a similar target from different perspectives. For example, during the winter term of this last school year, we looked at organized crime in Europe from the perspective of police looking at criminals and from the perspective of criminals looking at police. I find that the difference in perspective, even when minor, always results in different analyses at the end of the class even though both teams are always working on the same fundamental intelligence requirements. As an exercise, it really helps drive home the point about perspective in intelligence analysis).

The CSIS study does not explicitly highlight US national security interests as the focal point of the study but it does seem to have that at least partially in mind when it states, "Our goal is to paint a picture of what the landscape will look like when the new president takes office and to identify the major signposts we can anticipate." Nor does the CSIS study explicitly rank-order the events in order of importance. Still, the projects were very similar in scope; certainly similar enough to invite some comparisons.

Tomorrow -- The Geographical Perspective