Trends Identified
Digital Twin – Virtualized Insights
Digital twins are virtual models of physical things, products, buildings and systems and their data and information flows. Digital twins create a holistic view of products, buildings and processes and allow virtual simulations and modifications. The real power of a digital twin is the close to real-time linkage between physical and digital worlds. The building elements are: sensors, data, integration layer, analytics and the digital twin, the virtual model, itself. Digital twins promise to improve situational awareness, enable better responses to changes, particularly for asset optimization and preventive maintenance. They can help extending the lifetime of assets and optimizing the performance. Digital twins are increasingly and successfully used for product prototyping, reducing the development times and costs. The market is immature and we are still observing rather simple digital twins like virtual models of buildings, oil platforms and prototypes. The demand is increasing fast and digital twin templates, platforms and services will proliferate. Digital twins won’t stop at assets or things but will be expanded to operations, systems, people, business processes and metadata structures over time. These digital representations will be connected more tightly to their real-world counterparts and infused with more sophisticated artificial intelligence. Obstacles are the heterogeneous and disconnected sources of data and the complexity of the projects. Digital twins will start around asset monitoring, optimization and rapid prototyping. Midterm, operation of factories and companies will follow, long term, we will see generating insights around product and services use and business modelling.
2018
Trend Report 2018 - Emerging Technology Trends
SAP
Virtual cash, virtual weapons
Digitization of currency will create a clash among nation-states, corporations, civilians, and bad actors.
2018
Top Policy Trends of 2018
PWC
Combinatorial-technology explosion
Digitization, machine learning, and the life sciences are advancing and combining with one another to redefine what companies do and where industry boundaries lie. We’re not just being invaded by a few technologies, in other words, but rather are experiencing a combinatorial technology explosion.
2017
The global forces inspiring a new narrative of progress
McKinsey
Technological Innovation
Diminishing availability of low cost, easily accessible hydrocarbon resources, and the need to reduce carbon emissions, will stimulate intensive research to find alternative forms of energy, although a rapid decline in hydrocarbon use is unlikely.
2010
Global strategic trends - out to 2040
UK, Ministry of Defence
IoT-based Context-aware Dimming Technology
Dimming technology that enhances utilization and energy efficiency, mimics sunlight, and assists in customized health care, through automatic control of the direction and brightness of lighting by sensing outdoor conditions
2017
10 emerging technologies in 2017
South Korea, Korea Institute of S&T Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP)
Disasters
Disasters associated with natural hazards have become more frequent during the past 20 years (Figure 18).38 Between 1996 and 2015, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) estimated a total of 8,104 disasters related to natural hazards across all continents, with 4.1 billion people affected by these events, which is almost twice the level recorded between 1976 and 1995.
2017
Global trends
UNDP
Disengagement
Disengagement the evolution of ways in which we communicate and interact. Interpersonal divergence: The advent of digital has created incredible impacts in connecting people across the globe, but often at the expense of face-to-face interpersonal interaction. On the one hand, new friendships and relationships are explored through the rise of networking and social platforms. Digital personification: The confluence of artificial intelligence and augmented reality has resulted in a new mode of interaction with the digital world: the space of digital personification where “things” become humanized in a way. One of perhaps the most mainstream and foreshadowing examples of this occurred back in the mid-90’s, where Tamagotchi digital pets from Japan rose in prominence with children. NIMBY: For years, the NIMBY (“Not in my backyard”)phenomenon has been described in economics textbooks as the classic example of how people’s attitudes and behaviors often don’t match up. NIMBY represents the disengagement of society with outcomes that do not affect them at face value. Take the example of the great big trash in the North Pacific Ocean. Despite consumers’ emphasis on being eco-friendly, the spinning vortex of garbage was first detected in the 1990s, formed partially as a result of consumer waste from a materialistic product-driven culture and loose incentives for proper waste disposal and recycling. Fragmented workforce: Mobile technologies have fundamentally changed the way we work today. As virtual connectivity grows, physical co-location diminishes. Gallup data suggests that 37% of the workforce in the US have telecommuted and companies have begun to roll out alternative work schedules (e.g., 4-day weeks). What has resulted is a fragmentation of the workforce. While this enables flexibility and agility, questions of employee engagement and productivity have inevitably risen. Political defiance: While heralded as the hallmark of democracy, political disengagement has become a new normal, where individuals don’t feel as if their voice is heard over the din of mass opinion. Voter apathy is high and campaigns to increase voter turnout in critical election years abound.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Displacement
Displacement the movement of people, ideas, and challenges across the globe. Mass migration: As terrorism and violence in the Middle East and surrounding nations grow, the world is facing a massive international refugee crisis. Half of Syria’s pre-war population has been killed or forced to flee their homes and at least 4.7 million Syrian refugees have fled to neighboring countries, with at least 1 million applying for asylum within Europe. The refugee crisis places immense pressure on the social support and political systems of European countries, and in some cases (e.g., Hungary and some Balkan countries), we see nations beginning to consider closing their borders as the pressure mounts. Infrastructure shift: The world is becoming more mobile and as a result, the infrastructure needed for our daily lives is shifting from roads and pathways to cell towers and digital networks. Our increasingly technological lifestyles demand constant connectivity, and as a result, bandwidth, reception, megahertz, and signal become more ubiquitous concepts. Internet-based economic activity was expected to reach US $4.2 trillion in the G-20 nations by 2016 and the digital economy was growing at about 10% per year (12-25% in emerging markets) to serve the more than 2.5 billion people connected to the Internet. Ecological pressure: Typically climate change and other environmental disasters are viewed as the drivers of displacement, but can also be affected quite significantly by migration patterns. As the world faces massive displacement due to political conflicts, for example, the pressure placed on our environmental ecosystems has risen. Refugee crises concentrate large numbers of people, resulting in strain on natural resources. Global supply chains: The liberalization of economic policies over the past several decades has contributed to a relaxing of trade barriers and free movement of labor and capital across boundaries, leading to a more rapid diffusion of ideas and cultures across political and geographic borders. As supply chains become increasingly international, countries have started to locate different stages of the production process in different locations. Allocation conflicts: As international wars and political conflict dominate the scene in many developing countries, resource fighting has led to the displacement of millions of residents. Consider the Eastern Congo, which has been undergoing a massive political conflict since the early 1990s, facing two international wars and multiple militia invasions. The value placed on its untapped raw mineral ores is around US $24 trillion and the political infighting to gain access to these resources has displaced millions of Congolese over the last several decades, who seek asylum in neighboring countries.
2017
Beyond the Noise- The Megatrends of Tomorrow’s World
Deloitte
Emergence of Disruptive Technology
Disruptive technologies will continue to evolve in the coming decades. Hence, it is in the hands of policy makers, entrepreneurs, business leaders and citizens to maximise application of these technologies while dealing with the challenges.
2017
Science & Technology Foresight Malaysia
Malaysia, Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Blockchain
Distributed electronic ledger that uses software algorithms to record and confirm transactions with reliability and anonymity.
2017
Innovation for the Earth - Harnessing technological breakthroughs for people and the planet
PWC