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foresight Emerald Article: Scan-4-Light: a Searchlight function horizon scanning and trend monitoring project Ozcan Saritas, Ian Miles

Article information: To cite this document: Ozcan Saritas, Ian Miles, (2012),"Scan-4-Light: a Searchlight function horizon scanning and trend monitoring project", foresight, Vol. 14 Iss: 6 pp. 489 - 510 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/14636681211284935 Downloaded on: 18-12-2012 References: This document contains references to 16 other documents To copy this document: [email protected] This document has been downloaded 13 times since 2012. *

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Scan-4-Light: a Searchlight function horizon scanning and trend monitoring project Ozcan Saritas and Ian Miles

Ozcan Saritas is based at Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, and at the Higher School of Economics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Ian Miles is also based at Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, and at the Higher School of Economics, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

Abstract Purpose – The current paper aims to present the Scan-4-Light study, which was conducted for the systematic scanning and analysis of the Searchlight newsletters as a rapidly growing collection of articles on trends and topics in development and poverty. Design/methodology/approach – Built upon the concept of the systemic foresight methodology, the Scan-4-Light approach involves the integrated use of horizon scanning, network analysis and evolutionary scenarios combined with expert consultations and workshops. The study identified the emerging trends, issues, weak signals and wild cards; created high-value visualisations to emphasize the results and findings; and produced narratives to increase the impact and awareness of the development issues. Findings – The Scan-4-Light project has resulted in a large number of specific outputs, providing the views of the Searchlight newsletters’ contents at various levels of granularity. It has set out to show how the tools used here can be applied to illustrate the relationships among issues, and how these vary across countries and regions over time, and are linked to various stakeholders and possible solutions to problems. Research limitations/implications – Scan-4-Light demonstrates how foresight tools and techniques can be used for the analysis of complex and uncertain issues, such as development and poverty, in a systemic way. Practical implications – The Scan-4-Light approach can be applied in a number of areas for scanning and identifying emerging trends and issues, and understanding the relationships between systems and solutions. Social implications – The paper gives evidence that most of the issues, if not all, related to development are not isolated, but interlinked and interconnected. They require more holistic understanding and intervention with an effective collaboration between stakeholders. Originality/value – A demonstration of a novel scanning approach is presented in the paper. Keywords Development, Poverty, Searchlight, Horizon scanning, Network analysis, Scenarios, Forward planning, Project evaluation Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction This paper presents the methodology and results of an exploratory scanning project, namely ‘‘Scan-4-Light’’. The project analyzed a set of newsletters produced by a network of forward-looking organizations known as the Searchlight function, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The Searchlight newsletters are a rapidly growing collection of articles on trends and topics in international development that are of importance to the Rockefeller Foundation’s research partners in various regions of the world. The newsletters provide information and analysis through the lens of those working on the ground, and provide forward-looking perspectives on important topics and challenges.

DOI 10.1108/14636681211284935

VOL. 14 NO. 6 2012, pp. 489-510, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1463-6689

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The Manchester approach, Scan-4-Light, is one of four scanning approaches developed by a set of Rockefeller Foundation grantees who were commissioned to bring their own methodological approaches and analysis of the Searchlight newsletters. The study presented in this paper covers the methodology, process and findings of the Scan-4-Light analytical scanning approach. Scan-4-Light aimed at using an overview of contents of all the Searchlight newsletters and identifying key and common themes on socio-economic development and emerging developmental issues. In this respect, the present study is an effort to develop a holistic and cross-cutting view of the Searchlight newsletters. The Scan-4-Light methodology involved a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques such as horizon scanning (Miles and Saritas, 2012), network analysis (Nugroho and Saritas, 2009), and evolutionary scenarios (Saritas and Nugroho, 2012) combined with expert analysis to provide an interpretative and narrative depth. The internal analysis of the Searchlight newsletters against each other is complemented by an external analysis, comparing the newsletters against an external source of data, which is in this case the Millennium Project’s ‘‘State of the Future’’ study. The scanning work indicates the countries, developmental issues and keywords that appear with the greatest frequency. The study is conducted at the global, continental, international, national, thematic and case levels. This method of analysis allows exploring the way specific issues are discussed in various countries and regions by revealing interesting trends and raising challenging questions. The use of the methodology is demonstrated with cases, which is intended to illustrate the potential of this approach. In depth analysis of specific themes like ‘‘urban poverty’’ is provided, as well as alignment, linkage and correlation between issues as related to specific countries, stakeholders, over-time and across subjects. For example, the scan shows a link between ‘‘civil and political rights’’, ‘‘media harassment’’ and ‘‘urbanization’’. Similarly, central development issues are connected to issues of modernization such as water scarcity, sanitation and the relationships between state technologies and economic growth. Given similarities in the way certain countries express policy and development concerns, using this kind of analysis can identify areas where countries may collaborate to find solutions to common problems. However, it should be noted that the findings presented in this paper are not intended to provide concrete policy recommendations in any one area examined. Thus, the paper begins with the presentation of the background of the Searchlight initiative and Scan-4-Light approach in section 2. Section 3 presents the key phases of the methodological approach and describes the quantitative and qualitative techniques used. The fourth section then presents the implementation of the methodology at the multiple levels (i.e. global, international, national, thematic and case levels) and gives examples of the results obtained. Finally, the paper is rounded off in section 5, where the use of the methodology is discussed and conclusions are derived for future activities. Overall, the scanning approach presented in this study has yielded a large number of striking results. Through analysis there is a considerable potential to produce further information that advances the work of both the writers of Searchlight newsletters and their audiences.

2. Background Recent years have witnessed increasing complexities in societies. The world has got better for some, who enjoy the benefits of financial, trade and investment flows in leading to a more interconnected and interdependent world. These developments have been accelerated by rapid technological progress in areas such as ICTs, fuel cells and bio- and nano-technologies. On the other hand, the world became more vulnerable for the vast majority in the form of social and economic instability and hostility due to the economic recession, lack of fresh water, food and energy supply, climate change, regional conflicts, and respective population movements, which resulted with a number of complex and uncertain issues particularly in the developing and under-developed parts of the world in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

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The Rockefeller Foundation has dedicated considerable resources to support a wide range of activities for the well-being of humanity around the world. As a part of this overarching vision the Foundation initiated a Searchlight Function to investigate in the key trends, drivers of change and issues for the anticipation of the future of development and poverty. The Searchlight Function consists of a group of 11 grantees from Asia, Africa and Latin America, who examine the dynamics of change in social, technological, economic, environmental, political, and value systems in their regions by using forward looking tools such as horizon scanning and technology monitoring. The output of this work is reported in monthly trend monitoring newsletters by monitoring secondary sources of information such as academic journals, newspapers, magazines, and other relevant sources of information. The newsletters present a rich overview of development issues and dynamics of change in global and local forces, which shape the agenda for developmental studies. Covering a wide range of topics, the articles in newsletters are blended with the points of view of the grantees, their areas of expertise, and knowledge of their local contexts. Over 200 newsletters have been published to date. Reaching a critical mass of the newsletters over past three years, the Rockefeller Foundation’s Research and Record Unit partnered with four Searchlight Visualization teams with the aim of synthesizing the work done in order to: B

carry out a horizon scanning work to identify the emerging trends and thematic issues in the newsletters;

B

create high-value visualizations to emphasize the results and findings; and

B

increase the impact and awareness of the development issues to provide input for the purposes of strategy development, learning and wider dissemination.

Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR)’s Innovation Futures (INNOFUTURES) team at the University of Manchester was one of the four Searchlight Visualisation Partners tasked with the development of a horizon scanning approach and analysis of the Searchlight newsletters with the aforementioned objectives. The Manchester team developed the Scan-4-Light approach, which is mainly based on the systemic foresight methodology (SFM). Suggested by Saritas (2006), the SFM aims to tackle with situations involved in the human and social systems, which are open in nature, due to the unpredictability of the behaviors of system elements. Investigations into these systems require: B

anticipation with the intention of being prepared for whatever might follow from the ongoing and future social, economic and political mayhem with a rich understanding of systems, their history and possible futures;

B

analysis of different stakeholder perspectives and their social relationships, which can affect and be affected by the foresight process; and

B

investigation on the formal and informal networks and procedures, which may be in favor or in conflict with other systems.

The SFM is implemented in an iterative, dynamic and evolutionary process, which involves following phases, which are explained in detail in Saritas (2012): B

intelligence (scoping, surveying and scanning phase);

B

imagination (creative and diverging thinking phase);

B

integration (ordering and converging phase);

B

interpretation (strategy phase);

B

intervention (action phase);

B

impact (evaluation phase); and

B

interaction (engagement phase)[1].

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The Scan-4-Light approach involves various steps of this methodology, including the intelligence phase through ‘‘horizon scanning’’, the imagination phase through ‘‘network analysis’’, the integration phase through ‘‘visualizations’’, the interpretation phase through ‘‘narratives’’, and the interaction phase through ‘‘consultations and workshops’’. The horizon scanning concept has been discussed extensively in the first paper of the present Special Issue by Miles and Saritas (2012). Horizon scanning work involves the analysis of trends, drivers of change, weak signals, wild cards/shocks, and discontinuities. The scanning data is usually obtained in two ways: 1. anticipatory intelligence through the future-oriented dialogue and/or a survey of experts such as a big picture survey (Saritas and Smith, 2011); and 2. open source intelligence (OSNIT), which involves finding, selecting, and acquiring information from publicly available sources such as academic publications, newspapers and electronic media, and analyzing it to produce actionable intelligence (Saritas, 2012). The input received from the scanning phase is transformed into systemic representations through a network analysis procedure. Network analysis is a powerful approach to generate a ‘‘sociogram’’, which is a visual map of relationships between actors, organizations, concepts and issues emerging from the scanning phase (Nugroho and Saritas, 2009). Sociograms reveal patterns of relationships or structure visually and provide cluster, collaboration and diffusion networks by portraying emerging effects that cannot otherwise be exposed. After identifying the trends, uncertainties and issues through the scanning phase, and sorting and mapping them with network analysis, the findings have been visualized with keyword clouds, maps, networks and other visual representation tools. The visualizations are represented with narratives following the ‘‘evolutionary scenarios’’ approach introduced by Saritas and Nugroho (2012). Evolutionary scenarios helps to understand the ways in which the future may unfold by mapping the gradual change and the dynamics of variables that characterize a set of situations in a particular period of time in the future. Therefore, not only are evolutionary scenarios capable of giving a snapshot of a particular future, but also explaining the emerging transformation pathways of events and situations from the present into the future as systemic narratives. These narratives are expected to provide input for setting a policy agenda to be used for actions. The whole process is aimed to be interactive and participative, which is one of the key components of the foresight process. Workshops and expert consultations are commonly used for the systematic engagement of the stakeholders in an inclusive process for the analysis of different perspectives and experts with their knowledge on the topic (Saritas et al., 2010). The participative nature of the process emphasizes the need for effectiveness and efficiency in meeting the society’s expectations and sustainable use of resources, therefore, aims to develop mechanisms to provide contributions of society, institutions, corporations, and associations to enhance policy with a normative and legal framework. Following the description of the background and objectives of the study and key principles of the methodology, the following section will present the Scan-4-Light approach and will detail how the Searchlight newsletters were analyzed and expectations of the project met.

3. Scan-4-Light approach In line with the key objectives of the Searchlight initiative, the Scan-4-Light approach aimed at examining how key constructs and issues are covered in the Searchlight newsletters, exploring common themes and making connections across newsletters where applicable. Additionally, the study looked beyond the information presented in the newsletters and attempted to situate the content in a broader context by identifying similar themes and modes of analysis through a comparative study with the Millennium Project’s ‘‘State of the Future’’ reports and 15 Global Challenges.

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The overall Scan-4-Light methodology consists of three pillars, including: 1. internal analysis; 2. external analysis; and 3. social network analysis with their synthesis through visualizations and narratives towards the end of the process (Figure 1). The steps of the methodology are described below: B

Internal scanning (I1, I2 and I3) – This module assesses and explores the Searchlight newsletters with references to each other, thus enumerating how often, and in what contexts, particular themes appear across the documents.

B

External scanning (E1, E2 and E3) – This module takes account of external sources of information. Data from the Searchlight newsletters is mapped against the 15 Global Challenges of the Millennium Project. This helps to synthesize and map a wide variety of development issues across the world and allowed for benchmarking between different continents and countries.

B

Social networking (S1, S2 and S3) – This phase maps issues and stakeholders with social network analysis tools and examines the systemic relationships between them with changes over time.

B

Visualisation (V) – The results of the scanning work are visualized in this phase, for instance, with statistics generated on the occurrence and co-occurrence of key terms. Different types of networks are constructed to reveal patterns and relationships. These networks form visual clusters of emerging effects that otherwise would not be exposed. This analysis provides an avenue for exploration of networked information.

Figure 1 Scan-4-Light methodology

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B

Interpretation and narratives (N) – After identifying the trends, uncertainties and issues through the scanning phase, and mapping and visualizing the relationships among them, this module provides various interpretations of visualizations.

B

Validation (VL), workshops and meetings (M) – This phase involves the review of the work done through scanning, visualization, interpretation and narratives by the authors of the Searchlight newsletters. A workshop held in Mumbai on March 5, 2011 aimed to share the results with the authors and a wider group of experts. The workshop provided an opportunity to test and validate methodological approaches formed and gather additional viewpoints and judgments from the participants. Apart from the workshop, individual experts were consulted throughout the process to discuss the intermediate and final outputs of the project.

B

Final report (F) – All findings are gathered in a final report.

During the Scan-4-Light project analyses have been conducted at different levels starting from a global view and delving deeper into the thematic level on a specific issue, ‘‘rainwater harvesting’’, which is selected for the purpose of demonstration. The methodological sophistication increases as the analysis goes deeper towards more focused thematic areas. A set of quantitative and qualitative methods was used throughout the study. These include: B

Bibliometric analysis – Although the data from the Searchlight newsletters were extracted through word-by-word reading, bibliometric analysis tools were also used to sort data and to conduct frequency analysis, which revealed the top development issues, actors, and most widely referred countries and organizations. Lexalyticsw Text Analysis software was used for this purpose[2].

B

Network analysis – The analysis and mapping of the data was conducted using a social network analysis software, PAJEKw. During the study networks were produced in different time periods (1999 and before; 2000-2009; 2010-2019; 2020-2029; 2030 and beyond), which allowed a portrayal of the evolution of the relationships. Narratives were generated in the form of evolutionary scenarios.

B

Statistical analysis. For each network of relationships, the density of ties, k-core and the network centralization scores were calculated. The calculations were made using the UCINETw software (Borgatti et al., 2002) based on Freeman’s degree of centrality measures (Freeman, 1979).

B

Data visualization – Data extracted were visualized by using the only tool, Many Eyesw provided by IBM[3]. The Many Eyes website allows users to upload data and then provide tools for producing graphic representations. Keyword clouds, maps and part of the networks analyses were generated using this tool. PAJEKw software was used to produce sociograms, which was one of the key components of the Scan-4-Light approach.

The methodological approach and tools described above were used at various levels of the study including: B

global level;

B

continental level;

B

thematic level: network analysis – evolutionary scenarios, trends, drivers of change, weak signals and wild cards concepts – references from Saritas and Smith (2011);

B

national level; and

B

case level.

The depth of analysis increased as the level of analysis moved from global to case level. As the level of analysis went down to more focused themes, methods and tools used differentiated and methodological sophistication increased. The study section below presents the different levels of analysis and gives examples from the findings, which are fully presented in the Scan-4-Light project report (Saritas and Miles, 2012).

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4. Study The following sections will present each phase of the scanning work through the steps of the methodology presented above. The results presented below are based on the analysis of the first 100 Searchlight newsletters since their publication in 2009. 4.1 Global-level developmental issues Although Searchlight newsletters primarily cover developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, a wide variety other developed and developing countries in the world are also mentioned due to their past, present or potential future relationships with these regions. However, the majority of the countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia are not referred in the newsletters analyzed. Given the geographic focus and the remit of the Searchlight organizations, the most frequently referred to countries are South Africa, Tanzania and Kenya in Africa; India, Bangladesh and China in Asia; and Brazil, Peru and Argentina in Latin America. This may be related to the size of the economies and/or rates of economic growth of those countries relative to others in their regions. For example, India and China are the largest Asian countries that have demonstrated rapid economic growth. Their fast development raises a reasonable question of whether economic growth and innovation bring societal well-being and solutions to the burning issues of poverty, hunger and disease along with increased manufacturing and exporting capacity. During the analysis, over 200 developmental issues were identified. Looking at the top developmental issues across the world, it is seen that poverty, energy, economy, health, food, trade, education, water, environment, and regional development are among the ten areas most frequently referred to. There are significant overlaps between these ten developmental issues and the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations in 2000[4]. However, ‘‘economy’’ and ‘‘trade’’ are among the issues that are not covered by the MDGs. While economic cooperation and trade play significant roles in countries’ development, the failure of the liberal paradigm in Latin America, and the ensuing debt crisis, shifted the focus of the international community away from the issues of economic growth and equitable distribution of resources. Although economic issues remain the main priority of the World Bank and the IMF, which continue to adhere to the principles of open economy and liberal trade, their impact on the national development agenda has been minimized (compared to the 1980s and 1990s) by the society-oriented focus of the United Nations. Environmental issues have more recently entered the world development agenda. However, they remain lower on the list of priorities compared to more long-lasting issues such as poverty, education, and health. This may indicate that environmental preservation is viewed as a desirable secondary issue, than a primary issue for developing and underdeveloped countries. Therefore, a more comprehensive framework, the 15 Global Challenges of the Millennium Project, was selected to cluster over 200 developmental issues identified. The aim was to compare and contrast the developmental issues in Searchlight newsletters and State of the Future reports on a one-to-one basis for the purpose of ‘‘externalistic’’ analysis, which is one of the key modules of the Scan-4-Light methodology. The Millennium Project Global Challenges are: 1. sustainable development and climate change; 2. clean water; 3. population and resources; 4. democratization; 5. long-term perspectives; 6. global convergence of IT; 7. rich-poor gap; 8. health issues;

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9. capacity to decide; 10. peace and conflict; 11. status of women; 12. transnational and organized crime; 13. energy; 14. science and technology; and 15. global ethics. The Global Challenges provide a framework to assess the global and local prospects for humanity. They are systemically interrelated and interdependent: an improvement in one makes it easier to address the others; and deterioration in one makes it harder to address the others. These Challenges are transnational in nature and transinstitutional in solution; they will not be resolved by any government or institution acting alone. Instead, they require collaborative action among governments, international organizations, corporations, universities, NGOs, and creative individuals (Millennium Project, 2012). The network analysis of the Searchlight newsletters will illustrate the systemic relationships between developmental issues and the stakeholders involved. The distribution of the main developmental issues under the 15 Global Challenges is illustrated in Figure 2. A number of striking results emerged from the mapping of the issues under the 15 Global Challenges. For instance, while the issues of ‘‘political freedom’’ and ‘‘modernization’’, which fall under ‘‘democratization’’ (Challenge #4), appear regularly throughout the newsletters; this is about three times less than the reference to population issues or resource inequality between rich and poor. Likewise, issues of gender equality (status of women – Challenge #11) does not appear with as much frequency as other challenges, however, there is an evidence that high level of importance is given on this topic, which is indicated by the number of NGOs in Africa and Asia to support women. Issues related to ‘‘science and technology’’ and ‘‘information technologies’’ appear more frequently than ‘‘peace and conflict’’. A possible interpretation for this trend would be that changing international environment that emphasizes a free flow of information across Figure 2 Distribution of trends under 15 Global Challenges

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geo-political boundaries rather than concerns over conflict and security, which were heightened in previous decades. The following sections will look at these issues in greater detail with focus on continents, countries and more specific themes. 4.2 Continental-level developmental issues This level of analysis looks at the three continents that were focused on by the Searchlight newsletters, i.e. Africa, Asia and South America. Following the analysis of continents one by one, they will be benchmarked with each other to detect the commonalities and differences between them regarding developmental issues. Figure 3 illustrates the key developmental issues for Africa and their distribution across the Global Challenges, with Top 5 global challenges highlighted at the upper left corner[5]. Food, poverty, security, health and elections are the most frequently used keywords related to the developmental issues. When all issues are distributed across the grand challenges, it appears that population and resources, rich-poor gap, health, democratization, and sustainable development are among the key challenge areas. An interesting observation is that they issues on peace and conflict do not appear frequently in the analyses, despite the fact that Africa has experienced numerous national and regional conflicts lately, including those in Rwanda, Ethiopia, Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia. The fact that the United Nations has put a lot of effort and resources into establishing and maintaining peace on the continent might be influential on the way leading journalists and aid workers to focus more on the issues of stable development including democratization and fair distribution of power. Compared to Africa, Asia has its own unique challenges. Energy, poverty, water health and education are among the key developmental issues. When clustered under the Global Challenges, it is observed that rich-poor gap, population and resources, health, sustainable development and energy are the top challenge areas. A significant emphasis on energy issues in Asia is understandable given the relative lack of natural resources compared to other regions. For instance, China has deposits of coal; however, the country primarily relies on the imports of gas and oil. On the political front, one of the territorial disputes between China and Vietnam concerns a group of islands, which are close to oil deposits. A project for Figure 3 Developmental issues in Africa

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a gas pipeline is considered that would deliver Iranian and Turkmen resources to India and Pakistan through Afghanistan (Millennium Project, 2008a, pp. 1-19). Poverty, access to clean water and healthcare also remain among the most burning issues of Asian development. The large population of urban poor, particularly those living in slums, suffer from infectious diseases that clean water and improved healthcare could help to mitigate. Latin America presents a slightly different picture to Africa and Asia. Environment emerges as a key developmental issue, followed by governance and democracy, education, and science and technology. When distributed across the Grand Challenges, rich-poor gap, democratization, sustainable development, population and resources, and science and technology appear as the key challenge areas. The way environment emerges as a priority developmental issue in Latin America is worth considering. An interpretation for this might be that Latin American nations with smaller populations and increased pace of development may experience fewer problems with poverty and hunger. This may then lead to other development issues like the environment (Millennium Project, 2008b, p.13). Alternatively, these nations, which are in support of rapid innovation, may be looking to occupy a niche of an emerging green goods market that is projected to grow exponentially in the next decade. Figure 4 gives a benchmark of the Global Challenges in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Some of the top challenges such as rich-poor gap, population and resources, and health are common. However, there are also significant differences, such as the emphasis on democratization in Latin America. The differences are a natural consequence of the different development trajectories followed by the three continents in the last decades. While Africa was struggling to gain political stability in the 1990s and 2000s, the continent is only starting now the process of stable development and addressing the issues of poverty and health. Meanwhile, Asia has gone through a period of rapid economic growth based on technological development, but that growth has not been equitably distributed among the population. As a result, modern, hi-tech companies neighbor urban slums in many cities. Latin America has improved economically and socially following the debt crisis of the late 1980s. However, the continent still suffers from political turbulence with large segments of Figure 4 Benchmarking of the Global Challenges among the three continents

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the population demanding more equality, transparency and political freedom (Millennium Project, 2008b, pp. 19, 25). 4.3 Thematic level analysis: urban poverty Urban poverty is one of the key development issues, which arose mainly due to the mass migration of rural communities to urban areas because of severe economic problems and climate change. Analyses indicated that poverty, urbanization, transport, growth and migration are amongst the most widely referred issues in relation to urban poverty. These are the problems that are primarily observed in urban areas and typically in large developing countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Tanzania and Kenya (Millennium Project, 2008, p. 17). Combined with climate change, rapid and unbalanced economic growth resulted with social tensions with large groups of populations being excluded from the development process and started living in urban slums. Development issues and countries concerned with those issues are typically not independent from each other. They are systemically inter-related and inter-dependent. Therefore, a systemic analysis of these issues through a network analysis is useful in giving a holistic picture of the problem and in developing mechanisms for studying and intervening into development issues. A network diagram was produced to illustrate the relationships between countries and urban poverty issues (Figure 5). Figure 5 shows clusters of countries that are affected by similar developmental issues. For instance, it can be clearly observed that countries in Africa, such as Kenya, Sudan and Tanzania) experience similar developmental issues with other countries in the same region. Similarly, a clear cluster of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan is visible. Figure 5 also reveals the common developmental issues which bridge the clusters with each other such as urbanization, migration, disaster, health and growth. Countries that are tightly linked by similar developmental issues may benefit from international collaboration to address the concerns they have in common. The network diagram illustrated in Figure 6 illustrates the systemic relationships between urban poverty issues. Some of the interlinked issues form clusters, which are highlighted with circles in Figure 6. The highlighted clusters represent that the issues within them are referred together frequently. For instance, countries that have problems of domestic violence are likely to have issues with rural-urban divide and migration. This relationship points out a possible correlation between increased migration and growing slum areas and expanding domestic violence. Likewise, countries that are paying more attention to technological development and commerce are more likely to be interested in such issues as fighting corruption or increasing their national security and stability. Urbanization in more developed countries may result in congestion linked to heavy traffic from increased car ownership. The following set of figures was produced based on a timeline analysis with the urban development issues. The issues were clustered based on the time periods they refer to. Five time periods were identified: before 1999; 2000-2009; 2010-2019; 2020-2029; after 2030. Networks were generated for each time period and the evolution of these networks was observed. This is one of the most innovative aspects of the methodology, which is based on the ‘‘evolutionary scenarios’’ concept developed by Saritas and Nugroho (2012). Figure 7 illustrates the key urban poverty issues and their relationships in the time period covering before 1999. Among a number of points, the network diagram highlights that civil and political rights and media harassment are linked heavily to central issues of urbanization, which can be observed at the core of the network diagram. The main developmental issues are also linked to modernization issues such as state, technologies and growth, and water (scarcity) related to sanitation issues. Figure 8 shows that in the period of 2000-2009, the impact of Millennium Development Goals, where food and poverty become the linking issues (brokers) connecting citizen rights and urban development. During this time period, food and poverty remain the central issues

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Figure 5 Network of countries and urban development issues

of concern for the most underdeveloped and developing countries. The solutions to these issues became concentrated compared to the earlier period. Better sanitation and political modernization were seen as major steps for improvement in the 2000s. Figure 9 illustrates the intensification of links on the urban-related issues in the 2010-2019 period. Compared to the previous figures, the map of development has changed significantly. This might be primarily because most of the Searchlight newsletters focus on the present or near-future issues and most of the issues discussed in the newsletters refer to this particular time period. Greater expectations arose regarding technological development and infrastructure improvement. The central issues link, rather saliently, to both physical and economic infrastructures. One interpretation here can be that most countries aim to catch up with the advanced nations economically and socially in order to improve their living conditions and finally solve the long-lasting problems of poverty and food supply. Most countries appear to rely on increased mobility, capitalization, finance and construction rather than any drastically new development schemes. As the time horizon gets longer, the data input in the Searchlight newsletters gets smaller. The period 2020-2029 indicates a few very strongly connected issues illustrating that the

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Figure 6 Network of issues in urban poverty

relationships between urbanization, population, water and sanitation will remain strong (Figure 10). Although this period has similarities with the 2000-2009 period, in contrast it describes the links between different developmental issues rather than the problem-solution connections. While in the 2000s poverty and food supply were seen as major problems to be solved by better sanitation and political modernization, in 2020-2029 period, these issues will remain linked, but the solutions might come from other areas, which are not particularly indicated in the Searchlight newsletters. The expectations remain that in the present decade in the present decade (2010-2019), developing countries will catch up with the leading nations technologically and economically, but they will still have to deal with water shortage, sanitation issues, and problems related to rapid urbanization. Finally, the period beyond 2030 (Figure 11) indicates a clear link between the displacement of people and climate change, which may result in the emergence of new slums. Although climate change currently remains as a highly ideological and debated issue mainly in developed countries, the period beyond 2030 indicates that the developing world might be united in the view that the real consequences of the human footprint on nature will surface in the next 20 years. This means that the relationship between climate change and its impacts on socio-economic development may be confronted at present time; however, after 2030 the world may face a new reality where even more people will be displaced due to climate change and slum areas will be growing even more due to the massive migration from rural areas.

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Figure 7 Urban poverty issues (before 1999)

Figure 11 also reveals that the strong relationships between rural development, migration, urbanization, and resultant poverty are maintained in this time period. In order to have a better understanding of the network diagrams presented above, Table I gives an overview of the top development issues in each time period. Looking at the issues highlighted in italics, it is possible to track how urban development trends have evolved since the pre-1999 period and how they might evolve in the future decades. The pre-1999 period focuses on the beginning of urbanization through population, migration and eventual slum formation as key trends. The early 2000s show the problems that occurred due to these trends including poor health, sanitation and malnutrition. The 2010-2019 period indicates other longer term problems emerging due to growth and urbanization including transport, road infrastructure and resultant traffic congestion. The next period, 2020-2029, is characterized by migration, land use, housing and on-going urbanization trends. The period after 2030 shows a mixed picture of the urban development issues observed in the previous periods with a particular emphasis on climate change. Among the other development issues emerged in the post-2030 period, one of them, ‘‘handicrafts’’ is noteworthy. This can be interpreted as an example of a ‘‘wild card’’, as handicrafts might be one of the number of solutions to the urban development issues. It may

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Figure 8 Urban poverty issues (2000-2009)

be a way of empowering rural societies, providing them employment by respecting their cultures and heritage, and using these to achieve rural development, which may in turn reduce rapid and uncontrolled urbanization. Following the evolutionary analysis of the urban poverty issues in time, further analyses were conducted to understand the key stakeholders in urban development. Similar network diagrams were produced to illustrate the interconnections between urban poverty issues and stakeholders and the relationships between stakeholders. The analyses reveal that there are no population segments that are not influenced by the urbanization issues. Middle-class, poor, ethnic minorities can be mentioned among those segments, which are concerned with the well-being issues in urban environment including the effects of slums and informal housing and the need for vital infrastructures including hospitals. A number of organizations are also concerned with urbanization including the African Union, the World Bank, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the South African Development Community and others. A statistical analysis of the network diagrams by using the degree of centrality measures gives a ranking of the wide range of stakeholders in the field. Governments, poor populations, children, the United Nations, and slum dwellers are the top five stakeholders in the area of urban development. These analyses are helpful in terms of showing the actors that which can at present, or can potentially, collaborate with each other.

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Following the thematic analysis of the urban poverty issue, the Scan-4-Light study focused on individual and neighboring countries to understand the dynamics of development issues at the national level. 4.4 National-level analysis Three neighboring countries selected from each continent focused on included: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan (Asia); Kenya, Somalia, and Tanzania (Africa); and Bolivia, Brazil and Peru (Latin America). In order to illustrate the Scan-4-Light methodology, this section will present only the summary results of the selected Asian countries. Searchlight newsletters indicate that poverty, urbanization, climate, energy and investment are the key development issues in Bangladesh. These issues are at the top of the national development agenda as the densely populated country is one of the poorest in the world. India’s key development issues are characterized by water, poverty, urbanization, slums and education. Pakistan suffers from problems related to water, poverty, urbanization, education and flooding. A network analysis was conducted to illustrate each country’s development issues and common issues among them. It was seen that poverty and urbanization concern all three countries in South Asia. They are struggling to reach the Millennium Development Goals and to improve the quality of life. Meanwhile, sustainable development seems to be one of their main priorities. It is considered as a means both to achieve stable economic growth and to prevent environmental degradation. Floods are matter of concern to Pakistan and Bangladesh, while India is concerned more about water resources.

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4.4.1 A detailed look at India. India is one of the most populated countries in the world, which puts pressure on the government to reduce poverty and employ most of its citizens. Although the country has achieved significant improvements in the fight against poverty, there remain high levels of inequality and rapid urbanization, which resulted with growing slum areas in the outskirts of large cities. Low-level education is one of the factors that contribute to consistent poverty and inequality. Poor people have a harder time in accessing the kind of education and training needed to obtain high-paying employment. Therefore, a better education system that can provide skills for the available jobs and can access to all levels of society appears to be one of the solutions. The Scan-4-Light study achieved a further level of methodological sophistication with the introduction of another timeline analysis to show how focus and priorities on selected themes change over time starting from the last 20 years with projections into the next 20 years. Figure 12 illustrates how top three Global Challenges within the context of India (including population and resources, health and rich-poor gap) are evolving. Trends in the three domains remain similar over years with changing proportions with a slight change in the 2010-2019 period. Population and resources will be the key challenge, as it has been in the past. The rich-poor gap appears to be a growing issue over years. However, the trend on this domain suggests that this will be overcome to some extent in the next decade (2020-2029) and will continue to be a relatively smaller problem by percentage

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Figure 11 Urban poverty issues (after 2030)

Table I Evolution of the urban development trends decade by decade

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Before 1999

2000-2009

2010-2019

2020-2029

2030 and beyond

Poverty (170) Urbanization (156) Food (131) Rural (121) Population (121) Water (115) Migration (110) Sanitation (97) Urban (94) Education (88) Agreements (75) Health (70) Sustainability (70) Environment (70) Slums (67)

Poverty (105) Slums (92) Sanitation (83) Rural (76) Food (73) Population (69) Migration (69) Urbanization (67) Urban (66) Health (64) Defecation (62) Water (62) Toilets (62) Economy (58) Malnutrition (53)

Urban (406) Poverty (394) Population (379) Growth (350) Slums (340) Disaster (320) Public transport (314) Transport (314) Policy (281) Cities (281) Road (268) Lifestyle (262) Landslide (238) Catastrophe (238) Congestion (238)

Population (36) Sanitation (36) Water (25) Rural (25) Urban (25) Urbanization (21) Poverty (13) Housing (13) Transport (13) Land (13) Health (13) Migration (13) Business (8) Economy (8) Agriculture (8)

Rural (18) Poverty (18) Migration (18) Urbanization (18) Malnutrition (11) Food (11) Sanitation (11) Health (11) Land (11) Water (11) Transport (11) Housing (11) Handicrafts (7) Environment (7) Agriculture (7)

Note: Figures in parentheses indicate the degree of centrality measures

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Figure 12 Timeline analysis for India

compared to health. Health appears to be one of the key issues over years, though improvements in rich-poor gap, such as in 2010-2019 period, can reduce the health-related problems.

4.5 Case analysis: rainwater harvesting In addition to above analyses, a micro level case, namely ‘‘rainwater harvesting’’, was selected and analyzed in depth. This involved a detailed word-by-word investigation on the topic in the Searchlight newsletters. All statements on the topic were examined through different lenses by considering whether they focus on the: B

diagnosis of the problem;

B

prognosis;

B

conceptualization of solutions;

B

prescription on policies and strategies;

B

evaluation of actions; and

B

recommendations for action after evaluation.

Rainwater harvesting is seen as an important long term and sustainable solution as the water situation becomes critical across India (Millennium Project, 2008a, pp. 7-71, 13-39, 14-136). The following quotation gives a striking summary of the problem: The vagaries of the monsoons in India dictate the performance of its economy. Poor rains spell water cuts for urban households in general. For the poor living in urban slums, it means that the water, which they buy illegally at a cost higher than that paid by the rich, just got dearer (Intellecap, 2010, p. 1).

The objective was to discuss whether the issue was sufficiently presented from these lenses and whether there is any gap to be filled such as with solutions, evaluations, and action recommendations. A set of qualitative models were produced to explain the issue including ‘‘technical systems’’, ‘‘actor-network systems’’, ‘‘political economy systems’’. Figure 13 brings those models together in the ‘‘solution and intervention system’’ for collective added value, which shows the problem/tension areas, solution components and key intervention points. Some of these elements were clearly mentioned in the Searchlight newsletter, such as the micro-finance institutions, which have started providing rainwater harvesting systems to poor communities. However, following an in-depth analysis of the case, it was concluded that the problems and solutions lie at the multiple levels of governance, such as contribution to tax base for the provision of better infrastructure, management of technology, privatization, education and cultural transformation and the role of international organizations and other NGOs. The issue is multifaceted and the solution needs to be systemic.

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Figure 13 Water: solutions – interventions

5. Conclusions and discussion The Scan-4-Light project has resulted in a large number of specific outputs, providing the views of the Searchlight newsletters’ contents at various levels of granularity. These probes give indications about the ways in which development issues are being articulated by the authors of the newsletters, and it will be valuable to establish how they interpret the apparent patterns. It is anticipated that some results will be quite readily explicable, while others will raise challenging questions about how development issues are interrelated and how approaches to these issues are reflected in the newsletters. The current paper has set out to show how the tools used here can be applied to illustrate the relationships among issues, and how these vary across countries and regions over time, and are linked to various stakeholders and possible solutions to problems. At the very least, the analyses here provide a fresh way of representing analyses reported in the newsletters, perhaps reinforcing points that are more traditionally made through statements of position. The Scan-4-Light methodology described in this paper also adds value in other ways, by demonstrating the scope for articulating issues and their relationships in new ways, and for depicting the incidence of particular issues and clusters of issues at particular times and places. This could be of value in terms of assessing the scope for coordinating and targeting policy initiatives. The study has also demonstrated that the sort of analysis attempted here is rather laborious, and the text of newsletters cannot simply be processed in an automated fashion with substantial human oversight to provide a context for the material. Further analyses may be completed more speedily given the lessons drawn by the current study, but will continue to require considerable work for the foreseeable future. Despite these requirements, the results attained in the current study appear to be sufficiently promising and provocative that extension of the methods (including internal and external approaches) is worthwhile – certainly methodologically, and very probably for more practical purposes, too. As a further step, the study can be extended to the other Searchlight newsletters. Other sources of information can also be included in the next phases of the study such as bibliometric analysis of Web of Science for emerging science, technology, social and environmental issues; technology mining of patent databases for the analysis of near market technologies and products; media analysis to understand broader socio-economic agenda

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and transformations; and web scraping of the internet for a number of other social, technological, economic, environmental and political issues related to development and poverty. An example of a large-scale global trend monitoring study is presented in Ena et al. (2012), where the authors of the present article are also involved.

Notes 1. This final phase continues throughout the Foresight activity. 2. See www.lexalytics.com/Text-Analytics 3. See www-958.ibm.com 4. The UN MDGs are: ‘‘End Poverty and Hunger’’, ‘‘Universal Education’’, ‘‘Gender Equality’’, ‘‘Child Health’’, ‘‘Maternal Health’’, ‘‘Combat HIV/AIDS’’, ‘‘Environmental Sustainability’’, and ‘‘Global Partnership’’. More information on the MDGs can be found at: www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ 5. Refer to Figure 2 for a legend on how each Global Challenge is represented with an icon.

References Borgatti, S.P., Everett, M.G. and Freeman, L.C. (2002), Ucinet VI for Windows: Software for Social Network Analysis, Analytic Technologies, Harvard, MA. Ena, O., Mikova, N., Saritas, O. and Sokolova, A. (2012), ‘‘A technology trend monitoring methodology: the case of semantic technologies’’, Technovation, submitted for publication. Freeman, L.C. (1979), ‘‘Centrality in social networks I: conceptual clarification’’, Social Networks, Vol. 1, pp. 215-39. Intellecap (2010), ‘‘Development initiative – rainwater harvesting’’, Searchlight South Asia – Monthly Newsletter on Trends in Pro-poor Urban Development in India, Bangladesh and Pakistan, Intellecap, New Delhi. Miles, I. and Saritas, O. (2012), ‘‘The depth of the horizon: searching, scanning and widening horizons’’, Foresight, Vol. 14 No. 6, pp. 530-45. Millennium Project (2008), Millennium Project 2008 State of the Future, Millennium Project, Washington, DC. Millennium Project (2012), available at: www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challeng.html Nugroho, Y. and Saritas, O. (2009), ‘‘Incorporating network perspectives in foresight: a methodological proposal’’, Foresight, Vol. 11 No. 6, pp. 530-45. Saritas, O. (2006), ‘‘Systems thinking for foresight’’, PhD thesis, Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, The University of Manchester, Manchester. Saritas, O. (2012), ‘‘Systemic foresight methodology’’, in Gokhberg, L., Meissner, D. and Sokolov, A. (Eds), Designing and Implementing Future Oriented STI Policy – Potentials and Limits of Foresight Studies, Springer, Berlin. Saritas, O. and Miles, I. (2012), Scan-4-Light: A Horizon Scanning/Trend Monitoring Project for the Rockefeller Foundation, Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Manchester. Saritas, O. and Nugroho, Y. (2012), ‘‘Mapping issues and envisaging futures: an evolutionary scenario approach’’, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 79, pp. 509-29. Saritas, O. and Smith, J. (2011), ‘‘The big picture – trends, drivers, wild cards, discontinuities and weak signals’’, Futures, Vol. 43, pp. 292-312. Saritas, O., Pace, L.M. and Stalpers, S. (2010), ‘‘Stakeholder participation and dialogue in foresight’’, in Borch, K. and Koutsopoulos, K. (Eds), Exploring the Future: The Role of Interaction in Foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 38-71.

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Further reading Batagelj, V. and Mrvar, A. (2003), ‘‘How to analyze large networks with Pajek’’, paper presented at a workshop at SUNBELT XXIII, Cancun. Nooy, W.D., Mrvar, A. and Batagelj, V. (2004), Exploratory Social Network Analysis with Pajek, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY.

About the authors Ozcan Saritas is a Senior Research Fellow in Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), the University of Manchester. He is also a Visiting Professor National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Ozcan Saritas is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected] Ian Miles is a Professor at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research (MIoIR), the University of Manchester. He is also the Head of the Laboratory for Economics of Innovation, National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia.

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