Trends Identified
Robots
Electro-mechanical machines or virtual agents that automate, augment, or assist human activities, autonomously or according to set instructions.
2017
Innovation for the Earth - Harnessing technological breakthroughs for people and the planet
PWC
Robots for traditional and undersea resource acquisition
Drones and robots will play a growing role in prospecting and extracting in both traditional and undersea mining, particularly in situations that are remote, difficult or dangerous. The operators of these robots may live in urban locations with their families and never set foot on-site. Operators could live in different me zones around the world, enabling round-the-clock production without major disruptions to their personal and family lives.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
Robots on the farm
Farming has the potential to become far more resource-efficient and environmentally friendly on existing farmland, given the prospects for greater automation using_x000B_AI, robotics and sensors. Flying drones could monitor large fields more quickly and precisely. With information from these drones, as well as that provided by satellites and sensors, automated tractors and sprayers could apply water, seeds, pesticides and nutrients in more targeted and timely ways. This precision could further be enhanced through nanomaterial-based, slow-release pesticides and insecticides. Robotic pickers will continue to emerge and, in time, be able to harvest more types of crops. Automated agriculture could make indoor agriculture more viable in regions where the impact of climate change is degrading arable land, food supply and reliability.
2013
Metascan 3 emerging technologies
Canada, Policy Horizons Canada
Role of government
Governments will be compelled to respond to the many grand challenges arising in the future in a context marked by mounting fiscal pressure, eroding public confidence in government and the continuing transition to a multipolar world, with the consequent potential for growing instability.
2016
OECD Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2016
OECD
Russia and China in 2030: authoritarian alliance or geopolitical rivals?
The relationship between China and Russia is likely to become stronger and Moscow’s dependency on Beijing will grow: Russia will be the junior partner. If Russia can cope with the limitations of this position, it could benefit from such a role.
2016
Global Trendometer - essays on medium- and long-term global trends
European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Russia’s standing among Europeans has slipped
Views of Russia were at their most positive in several European countries in 2011, but they have fallen since then and have remained consistently low over the past few years. Between 2011 and this year, the share of people with a favorable opinion of Russia has declined by double digits in France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK. The biggest drop occurred in the UK, where just 26% of the public now sees Russia favorably, down from 50% in 2011. Today, no more than 36% of the public in any of these five countries holds a favorable view of Russia.
2017
6 trends in international public opinion from our Global Indicators Database
Pew Research Center
Safe car travel?
Despite all the rapid urbanisation and talk of bullet trains and fantastical technology like the Hyperloop coming to the fore, the car isn’t going anywhere – and in fact, in the next couple decades, there will be even more of them on the road.
Driverless car technology is swiftly rolling out, with major tech companies and automakers aggressively seeking to debut human-free vehicles in coming years. But in addition, the sheer number of cars – self-driving or not – is going to skyrocket, studies show. In countries like China that are seeing a growing middle class, the environmental and infrastructural needs that an increasingly road-faring population demands is going to be a grand challenge. How do we ensure safety, fight pollution, and make sure driverless cars aren’t a menace on the road?
2017
10 grand challenges we’ll face by 2050
The BBC
Sanitation without sewers
Energy-efficient toilets can operate without a sewer system and treat waste on the spot. About 2.3 billion people don’t have good sanitation. The lack of proper toilets encourages people to dump fecal matter into nearby ponds and streams, spreading bacteria, viruses, and parasites that can cause diarrhea and cholera. Diarrhea causes one in nine child deaths worldwide. Now researchers are working to build a new kind of toilet that’s cheap enough for the developing world and can not only dispose of waste but treat it as well. In 2011 Bill Gates created what was essentially the X Prize in this area—the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge. Since the contest’s launch, several teams have put prototypes in the field. All process the waste locally, so there’s no need for large amounts of water to carry it to a distant treatment plant. Most of the prototypes are self-contained and don’t need sewers, but they look like traditional toilets housed in small buildings or storage containers. The NEWgenerator toilet, designed at the University of South Florida, filters out pollutants with an anaerobic membrane, which has pores smaller than bacteria and viruses. Another project, from Connecticut-based Biomass Controls, is a refinery the size of a shipping container; it heats the waste to produce a carbon-rich material that can, among other things, fertilize soil. One drawback is that the toilets don’t work at every scale. The Biomass Controls product, for example, is designed primarily for tens of thousands of users per day, which makes it less well suited for smaller villages. Another system, developed at Duke University, is meant to be used only by a few nearby homes. So the challenge now is to make these toilets cheaper and more adaptable to communities of different sizes. “It’s great to build one or two units,” says Daniel Yeh, an associate professor at the University of South Florida, who led the NEWgenerator team. “But to really have the technology impact the world, the only way to do that is mass-produce the units.” —Erin Winick
2019
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2019 - How we’ll invent the future, by Bill Gates
MIT Technology Review
Satellites and drones
Communication satellites have been used for Internet access in rural areas and developing countries since the early days of the Internet, and the industry has remained viable as a result of technical progress in launch technology (public and private), antennas, solar power, radios and other electronics, as well as tuning of TCP/IP protocols to account for the quartersecond latency due to the orbital altitude. It has been suggested that these technologies have progressed to the point where high-altitude platform stations (HAPSs) and lower orbit satellites are now viable as well. HAPSs are non-rigid airships, drones or balloons that hover or circulate around 15–30 km in the stratosphere (UNCTAD, 2014a). HAPSs have lower transmission delay (latency), but their signal cover (footprint) tends to be lower compared to other technologies (ibid.:38). An example of a project that offers broadband Internet using satellite communications is the Google Project Loon (ibid.), which uses HAPSs to create an aerial wireless network with up to 3G-like speeds.
2018
Technology and Innovation Report 2018
UNCTAD