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A work of speculative fiction. The Department of Strategic Continuity is not a real government agency, and this is not a government website. About this project

Department of
Strategic Continuity

Research program · LTFP

Long-Term Forecasting Program

Develops methods for reasoning and deciding under deep uncertainty over multi-decade horizons, evaluates the Department’s own forecasts, and supports continuity planning across the Department.
Lead office
Office of Long-Term Systems Research
Established
March 2026
Partner offices
Office of Strategic Risk Assessment

Program overview

The Long-Term Forecasting Program (LTFP) studies how an institution can make sound decisions about futures it cannot predict. It is led by the Office of Long-Term Systems Research, with the Office of Strategic Risk Assessment as partner.

Many of the Department’s questions concern horizons of decades, where the structure of the future is uncertain and not merely the values within it. Conventional forecasting, which assigns probabilities to well-defined outcomes, is of limited use under those conditions. The Program instead emphasizes methods for decision-making under deep uncertainty: identifying strategies that perform acceptably across a wide range of plausible futures, specifying the signposts that would indicate which futures are unfolding, and planning in advance the adjustments those signposts should trigger. These methods are described in DSC-WP-2026-012.

The Program also holds the Department to account for its own forecasts. It maintains a registry of quantitative statements made in Departmental publications, including the ensemble results of the Civilizational Systems Outlook, to which LTFP contributed scenario design, and scores them as outcomes become known. The purpose is to learn whether the Department’s methods are well calibrated and to make that record public.

A third strand concerns continuity planning: how the Department’s own multi-decade programs, such as NCRP and the archival work at Facilities Bravo and Charlie, can be structured so that their purposes, records and obligations survive changes of staff, leadership and circumstance.

Research objectives

  1. Develop and document methods for decision-making under deep uncertainty suited to multi-decade public planning.
  2. Maintain a public record of the Department’s quantitative projections and score them against outcomes.
  3. Define signposts and pre-planned responses for each of the Department’s principal long-horizon programs.
  4. Contribute scenario design and uncertainty analysis to ICSM ensembles and the Outlook series.
  5. Produce continuity plans for Departmental programs that are expected to outlast their founding staff.

Current research areas

Select a research area to read a summary of current work.

Decision-making under deep uncertainty

Robust and adaptive planning methods, exploratory modeling, and the identification of strategies that remain acceptable across many futures rather than optimal in one.

Forecast evaluation

Scoring rules, calibration analysis and track-record methods applied to the Department’s own projections, including long-horizon statements that can only be partially evaluated in the near term.

Signposts and adaptive pathways

Specification of observable indicators that would distinguish among scenarios, and of the decisions that should follow when each is observed, so that plans change by design rather than by improvisation.

Multi-decade continuity planning

Planning frameworks for programs whose duration exceeds normal budget, staffing and political cycles, with attention to how commitments and records are transferred between generations of staff.

Developmental milestones

Status as of October 2026.

  1. September 2026 Complete

    Planning under deep uncertainty

    DSC-WP-2026-012 published on 29 September 2026.

  2. October 2026 Complete

    Outlook scenario contribution

    Scenario design and uncertainty analysis contributed to DSC-TR-2026-014.

  3. 2026–2027 In Progress

    Departmental forecast registry

    Public registry of quantitative Departmental projections, with scoring procedures and a first calibration report.

  4. 2027 Planned

    Signpost framework for long-horizon programs

    Signposts and pre-planned responses defined for NCRP, CII and LDIPP, prepared with each lead office.

Research publications