Office of Long-Term Systems Research

Overview

The Office of Long-Term Systems Research (OLSR) is concerned with time. Its research addresses a problem common to all of the Department’s work: the questions the Department studies play out over decades, while the institutions that study them, and the methods they rely on, are built for horizons of a few years.

The Office leads the Long-Term Forecasting Program, which develops methods for decision-making under deep uncertainty — the conditions in which not only the probabilities of outcomes but the set of possible outcomes is in doubt. These methods are described in DSC-WP-2026-012. The Office contributed scenario design and uncertainty analysis to the Civilizational Systems Outlook, and it maintains a public record of the Department’s quantitative projections so that their accuracy can be judged as time passes.

A second line of work concerns institutional design. Several of the Department’s commitments, including the preservation of archives at Facilities Bravo and Charlie and the staged research of the Neural Continuity Research Program, are intended to outlast their founding staff and, potentially, the Department in its present form. OLSR studies how organizations that have sustained a purpose over long periods have done so, and applies those lessons to the Department’s own governance, records and succession planning.

The Office is also the Department’s principal home for philosophical and conceptual analysis. With DNC it authored DSC-WP-2026-006 on criteria for identity continuity in emulated cognitive systems, and it studies how questions such as equitable access to any future preservation capability could be decided legitimately. With CIA-DSC it co-leads work on what the Department’s archives should preserve and how to make them intelligible to future readers.

OLSR is the smallest of the five divisions and is based at headquarters. Its staff include forecasters, decision analysts, historians of institutions, philosophers and planners.

Responsibilities

• Lead the Long-Term Forecasting Program and develop methods for decision-making under deep uncertainty.
• Maintain a public registry of Departmental projections and evaluate their calibration over time.
• Contribute scenario design and uncertainty analysis to ICSM ensembles and the Outlook series.
• Prepare multi-decade continuity plans for Departmental programs, including signposts and pre-planned responses.
• Conduct research on the design of long-lived institutions and apply it to the Department’s governance and records.
• Lead conceptual and philosophical research on identity continuity with DNC.
• Advise on selection, documentation and interpretability of preserved collections with CIA-DSC.
• Study legitimate processes for decisions on access to any future preservation capability.

Organization

Forecasting Methods Branch

Develops and tests forecasting and scoring methods, maintains the Departmental forecast registry, and publishes calibration reports.

Decision Analysis Branch

Applies robust and adaptive planning methods to Departmental decisions, designs scenario ensembles with OSRA, and specifies signposts for long-horizon programs.

Institutional Continuity Branch

Studies the design of long-lived institutions, prepares continuity plans for Departmental programs, and advises on records, succession and the transfer of obligations between generations of staff.

Philosophy and Foundations Office

Conducts conceptual research on identity continuity, moral status and intergenerational obligation in support of NCRP and the Research Ethics Review Board.