Trends Identified
Machine-readable world
In recent years, governments have started to discover the power of machine readability, with energy devoted to building open government data programmes that help to fuel innovations both within government and in the broader economy. They are now setting their aims even higher by developing innovative new projects that have the potential to completely reconceive one of the most foundational roles of government – creating laws and other rules that impact the daily lives of citizens and businesses. Governments are also seeking to digitise human characteristics, senses and surroundings to deliver innovative services and interventions. This growing wealth of machine-readable content serves as fuel for a new generation of innovations that use emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and blockchain. While these advances show tremendous potential, they can also pose major risks and raise significant ethical questions. Governments should seek to understand and experiment with these technologies, but should do so in an informed and ethical way.
2019
EMBRACING INNOVATION IN GOVERNMENT-Global Trends 2019
OECD
#twinning: Farming's digital doubles will help feed a growing population using less resources.
Imagine a planet where instant access to critical data on the world’s farmland could be provided to anyone that needs it. In the next five years, this will become reality when a digital twin of the world’s agricultural resources is readily available.
2019
5 in 5 - Research predicts five innovations that will change our lives within five years.
IBM Research
Spoiler alert: Blockchain will prevent more food from going to waste.
Within five years, we’ll eliminate many of the costly unknowns in the food supply chain. From farmers to grocery suppliers, each participant in the food ecosystem will know exactly how much to plant, order, and ship. Food loss will diminish greatly and the produce that ends up in our carts will be fresher—when blockchain technology, IoT devices, and AI algorithms join forces.
2019
5 in 5 - Research predicts five innovations that will change our lives within five years.
IBM Research
Mapping the microbiome will protect us from bad bacteria.
Within five years, food safety inspectors around the world will gain a new superpower: the ability to understand how millions of microbes coexist within the food supply chain. These microbes—some healthy for human consumption, others not—are everywhere –in foods at farms, factories, and grocery stores. The ability to constantly and cheaply monitor the behaviors of microbes at every stage of the supply chain represents a huge leap in food safety.
2019
5 in 5 - Research predicts five innovations that will change our lives within five years.
IBM Research
Dinner plate detectives: AI sensors will detect foodborne pathogens at home.
Within five years, the world’s farmers, food processors, and grocers—along with its billions of home cooks—will be able to detect dangerous contaminants effortlessly in their food. All they’ll need is a cell phone or a countertop with AI sensors.
2019
5 in 5 - Research predicts five innovations that will change our lives within five years.
IBM Research
A radical new recycling process will breathe new life into old plastic.
In five years, the disposal of trash and the creation of new plastics will be completely transformed. Everything from milk cartons and cookie containers to grocery bags and clothing will be recyclable, and polyester manufacturing companies will be able to take in refuse and turn it into something useful again.
2019
5 in 5 - Research predicts five innovations that will change our lives within five years.
IBM Research
Power and Values
A period of change in the international system is destabilizing assumptions about global order. Last year’s Global Risks Report argued that the world is becoming not just multipolar, but also “multiconceptual”. This chapter further examines how changing power dynamics and diverging norms and values are affecting global politics and the global economy. The chapter begins by outlining how normative differences increasingly shape domestic and international politics. It then highlights three trends with the potential to trigger disruptive change: (1) the difficulty of sustaining global consensus on ethically charged issues such as human rights; (2) intensifying pressure on multilateralism and dispute-settlement mechanisms; and (3) states’ increasingly frequent use of geo-economic policy interventions.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Heads and Hearts
The Global Risks Report tends to deal with structural issues: systems under stress, institutions that no longer match the challenges facing the world, adverse impacts of policies and practices. All these issues entail widespread human costs in terms of psychological and emotional strain. This is usually left implicit but it deserves more attention—and not only because declining psychological and emotional well-being is a risk in itself. It also affects the wider global risks landscape, notably via impacts on social cohesion and politics.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Going Viral
The previous chapter looked at the emotional and psychological impact of the multiple transformations the world is undergoing. This chapter considers another set of threats being shaped by global transformations: biological pathogens. Changes in how we live have increased the risk of a devastating outbreak occurring naturally, while emerging technologies make it increasingly easy for new biological threats to be manufactured and released—either deliberately or by accident.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)
Fight or Flight
Rapidly growing cities are making more people vulnerable to rising sea levels. Two-thirds of the global population is expected to live in cities by 2050. Already an estimated 800 million people in more than 570 coastal cities are vulnerable to a sea-level rise of 0.5 metres by 2050.1 In a vicious circle, urbanization not only concentrates people and property in areas of potential damage and disruption, but it also exacerbates those risks—for example, by destroying natural sources of resilience such as coastal mangroves and increasing the strain on groundwater reserves. The risks of rising sea levels are often compounded by storm surges and increased rainfall intensity.
2019
The Global Risks Report 2019 14th Edition
World Economic Forum (WEF)