Long-Range Futures Research: An Application of Complexity Science

Succinct and user-friendly, Long-Range Futures Research: An Application of Complexity Science by Robert H. Samet explains how complexity science provides an evolutionary model for the civil system and a new world view. Written for the systems science, and environmental, social and management science schools of futures studies, this book is fully annotated and meticulously researched and penned. Broken into four parts including thirteen chapters and appendices, this technical guide looks at the future evolutionary trajectory and geopolitical macrostructure in relation to other international models and global reference scenarios. Highly readable, it interprets long-range emergent phenomena, using empirical data from accepted contemporary sources of information such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The next generation of forward-thinking world leaders must expand ways of analysing problems and undertaking futures research.

Robert H. Samet is a civil engineer with forty years experience as a specialist consultant in planning and futures research, development and regional studies, investment appraisal and corporate location strategy. For a decade, he directed a multi-client study to develop the London Megapolis Regional Information System covering some 300 urban centres and 11,000 establishments, to explore the transactional dynamics behind urban investment flows and to explain the changing gradients between locations in investment returns. He was also a consultant of US-based Planning Research Corporation that applied systems science approaches to international development programmes in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. His clients included the Ministries of Planning in both Algeria and Saudi Arabia and also the Saudi Royal Commission for Industrial Cities. He and his wife live in a village in Lincolnshire, England, and have four married sons in the USA, Scotland, France and Switzerland.