Predicting Tipping Points

The European Futurists Club Lucerne, organizer of the European Futurists Conference Lucerne, is looking for approaches as to how tipping points (discontinuous developments, trend disruptions, trend turning points, scale changes of developments) can be recognized early or even predicted at different time scales.

We are looking for models, theories, and/or research projects in the areas of forecasting and/or early recognition that can provide rational explanations for such events.

The European Futurists Club Lucerne is looking for an interdisciplinary tipping point model. The model should be capable of recognizing upcoming tipping points with a significant likelihood of success and position them in time and space. The model should contain various early recognition and/or early warning indicators that allow the monitoring of the proximity of a tipping point (more  here).

We are looking forward to your paper satisfying the following guidelines:
•    maximum 4 pages (without footnotes and references);
•    graphically explains the basic principle of the approach;
•    displays its derivation;
•    states for which questions, problems, systems the approach is valid;
•    shows at what time scale the forecasting or early recognition works.

Due date is December 31, 2010.

A committee of the international advisory board of the European Futurists Conference Lucerne will go over the submitted papers.

This committee consists of:

•    Prof. Dr. Markku Wilenius, Vice President Advisory Board European Futurists Conference
•    Prof. Dr. Enric Bas, member of Advisory Board European Futurists Conference
•    Dr. Karlheinz Steinmüller, member of Advisory Board European Futurists Conference
•    Georges T. Roos, futures researcher, Director European Futurists Conference

Authors of promising approaches will be invited to a workshop to be held in Switzerland in the spring of 2011 (May 20-22, 2011). During this workshop we will compare different approaches and identify possible commonalities and synergies.

Papers should be submitted in digital format (Word, PDF)

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Georges T. Roos
Director European Futurists Conference Lucerne
[email protected]