Cultivating Strategic Foresight for Energy and Environmental Security

The United States (US) Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counter-intelligence has established an Energy and Environmental Security Directorate to initiate several international meetings aimed at developing a new business model better suited to the non-traditional challenges posed by the energy-environment. The resulting international team has taken several steps toward the development of an energy and environmental strategic ecosystem (EESE) to cultivate the connections across conventional boundaries that are necessary to produce strategic foresight. An individual typically observes only fragments of phenomena and then develops a theory about the underlying factors that may have caused the events. The numerous complex scientific and social issues associated with energy and environmental security issues pose challenges for policy makers who seek to make evidence-based decisions. Contributors or intelligent consumers can intentionally provide incorrect and misleading information in an attempt to influence the system through deception.