Deliberating foresight knowledge for policy and foresight knowledge assessment

This paper gives an overview of the way foresight knowledge is deliberated in policy. It offers also an approach to assess the quality of foresight knowledge generated during foresight exercises. Although "foresight knowledge" is a special case, the idea of having a procedure, approach or method available for assessing the quality of knowledge is tempting: foresight knowledge consists out of various sources such as different scientific disciplines, normative visions on the future, planning, and scenario's. It also receives input from different sectors of society, such as industry, academia and civil society. How can we then assess the quality of knowledge inputs from such diverse sources and its implication for foresight exercises? This working paper is a first attempt to address this subject matter. We realise that this type of work has not been done before, and we hope therefore, that this first attempt will stimulate others to further explore this issue.