International Futures
International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale, long-term, integrated global modeling system. It represents demographic, economic, energy, agricultural, socio-political, and environmental subsystems for 183 countries interacting in the global system. The central purpose of IFs is to facilitate exploration of global futures through alternative scenarios. The model is integrated with a large database containing values for its many foundational data series since 1960. Through this web site IFs is freely available to users both on-line and in downloadable form.
IFs was a core component of a project exploring the New Economy sponsored by the European Commission. Forecasts from IFs supported Project 2020 of the National Intelligence Council as well as the NIC’s Global Trends 2025 for the Obama administration who took office in early 2009. IFs was used to provide driver forecasts for the fourth Global Environment Outlook of the United Nations Environment Program. IFs is also a key piece of the research project supported by DG INFSO of the European Commission to forecast ICT trends.
The model was developed over several generations, principally by Dr. Barry B. Hughes of the University of Denver and the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. IFs is continually being revised and updated, most importantly through the institutional support and structure of the Pardee Center. Please take a tour of the website to learn more about the history and philosophy of the model, experiment with the standalone and web based versions of the model, or participate in our online community of modelers and policy makers.