COMPREHENSIVE ANTICIPATORY DESIGN SCIENCE

What is Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science and why is it relevant and critical in the today's world?

From a global perspective, we are faced with daunting challenges as documented by World Resources, 1996-97: the accelerating confluence of population expansion, increased demand for energy, food, clean drinking water, adequate housing, the destructive environmental effects of pollution from fossil fuels and nuclear waste, plus the growing divergence between the haves and have-nots and the potential for ensuing conflicts.

Only recently have national elected officials realized what global corporations already know: the issues of today and the future transcend political boundaries and nationalistic thinking and are globally interrelated, affecting each other in multiple ways.

When viewed as a whole, solutions arise that address multiple, interrelated issues in ways that otherwise would not be apparent if addressing each issue in isolation. Some strategies must be global, and any investigation into global solutions must, therefore, be comprehensive. Population growth, energy demand and pollution are predictable as trends. Planning must anticipate these trends if we are to find solutions that can stay ahead of them. We then ask the engineers and architects to design systems that will enable us to provide a desired quality of life.

Appropriate design must include consequences for natural resource use, cost efficiency and human factors. The science includes the proper scientific method and asking the right questions from the beginning. GENI's question is "how do we provide a decent living standard for everyone on the planet without damaging the environment for the long term?"

Good design must also include awareness of universal scientific principles. Ideally, artifacts and tools can then be created so that old problems disappear, since the new design makes them obsolete. The computer replacing the typewriter is a good example.

Comprehensive anticipatory design science acknowledges interrelatedness, trends and principles and then builds to meet today's needs without compromising the needs and environment for future generations.

This is exactly what the GENI Initiative does.