Using the International Futures Global Modeling System (Ifs) for Alternative Scenarios by the Numbers

Roy Pearson examines a valuable new Web-based application – the IFs model – that enables forecasters to deal with the future impacts of changes in their organization’s external environment. These can be product or market changes, but technological, demographic, social, political, and environmental changes as well. Of course, no business has the time, budget, and expertise to build a global model of the scope and size necessary to quantify the effects of all of these changes, especially for decades down the road. So the IFs model offers a way for you to map future alternative paths of major concern to you or your organization, providing a quantitative foundation for focusing discussions and planning. And it’s free to the public. Copyright International Institute of Forecasters, 2011