The Global Risks Forum (GRF)
Geopolitical futures concern the shifting distribution of power, alliances, trade, conflict and political economy, and the strategic shocks that can reorder them quickly. They are shaped by deliberate choices of states and leaders as well as by structural forces, which makes them hard to forecast and essential to explore. This page sets out how institutions use scenarios, structured judgement and forecasting records to prepare for geopolitical change, and where those methods fall short.
GRF · Established · service level R0
Geopolitical risk is the possibility that shifts in power, alliances, trade, conflict and political economy disrupt economies and institutions. These futures are shaped by deliberate choices as well as structural forces, which makes them hard to forecast. Forecasting tournaments showed that some trained, aggregated judgement beats chance on well-defined questions.
For geopolitical futures, in GRF's situational-awareness reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water with clouds now from NASA GIBS, framed on the Arctic; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For geopolitical futures, in GRF's situational-awareness reading, the map opens on population density, night lights and flood water with clouds now from NASA GIBS, framed on the Arctic; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Geopolitical futures · Horizon 2040 · Round 4
| Insurers exit high-risk postcodes | Finance | Medium | High | Protection retreat |
| Cheap sensors in informal settlements | Technology | High | Medium | Citizen data |
| Heat limits outdoor work hours | Labour | Medium | High | Heat economy |
| Synthetic media in elections | Information | Low | High | Trust erosion |
impact vs uncertainty
Political economy and strategic shocks. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Demography, technology, energy and economic weight move slowly and set the stage; leaders, elections and crises change direction quickly. Geopolitical foresight keeps both in view and does not mistake a trend for a destiny.
Wars, sanctions, coups and export bans propagate through trade, energy, finance and supply chains. Interdependence that once dampened conflict can become a channel for coercion.
Most geopolitical assessment rests on expert judgement. Overconfidence, mirror-imaging and anchoring on the recent past are documented failures; structured analytic techniques and scored forecasts make judgement auditable.
Published forecasts and scenarios can change the behaviour they describe. A warning may prompt prevention; an expectation of conflict may harden positions. Institutions treat disclosure of foresight as a governance choice.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Forecasting tournament | A competition in which forecasters predict well-defined questions and are scored on accuracy. |
| Brier score | A measure of the accuracy of probabilistic forecasts; lower is better. |
| Reflexivity | The way forecasts can change the behaviour they predict. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Organised violence events | count of events | monthly | Event datasets from news and field reports | OBSERVED |
| Geopolitical risk index | index | monthly | Newspaper text analysis | ESTIMATED |
| Trade-restrictive measures introduced | count of measures | monthly | Policy intervention monitoring | REPORTED |
| Military expenditure | share of GDP | annual | Government budgets, compiled estimates | ESTIMATED |
| Sanctions designations | count of listed entities | monthly | Official sanctions lists | OFFICIAL |
| Economic policy uncertainty index | index | monthly | Newspaper text analysis | ESTIMATED |
| Accuracy of resolved geopolitical forecasts | Brier score | per tournament | Forecasting tournament records | REPORTED |
| Democracy and rule-of-law indices | index | annual | Expert-coded surveys | ESTIMATED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| Uppsala Conflict Data Program | Georeferenced organised violence events and conflict-year data | CC BY 4.0 |
| ACLED | Political violence and protest events with actors and locations | ACLED terms of use, registration and attribution |
| SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Transfers databases | Military spending by country and international transfers of major arms | Free with attribution, SIPRI terms |
| Global Trade Alert | State interventions affecting trade, investment and migration | Free with attribution |
| Geopolitical Risk Index (Caldara and Iacoviello) | Monthly text-based measure of adverse geopolitical events and threats | Free with citation |
| V-Dem dataset | Expert-coded indicators of democracy and governance across countries | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Good Judgment Project tournament data | Records of forecasts and resolutions from the IARPA geopolitical forecasting tournament | Open research data, citation required |
Foresight Nexus prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| Ministries of foreign affairs and defence | Which alliances, capabilities and contingency plans hold across alternative security environments | Scenario sets, signposts and scored forecasts with their track records stated |
| Central banks and finance ministries | How fragmentation scenarios bear on financial stability, reserves and fiscal planning | Shock transmission channels, scenario narratives and the macro-financial variables each moves |
| Trade and economic security ministries | Which dependencies to diversify or secure, and at what cost | Dependence maps, restriction trends and scenarios of coercion and disruption |
| National security councils | Which strategic shocks warrant standing contingency planning | Shock scenarios with plausibility reasoning and the institutional responses they would require |
Geopolitical change combines slow structural shifts, such as demographic and economic weight, with sudden shocks, such as conflicts, sanctions, coups and financial crises. Interdependence through trade, finance, energy and technology has increased the ways shocks travel, while also creating incentives for cooperation. Strategic competition over technology, resources and supply chains has led many states to reconsider dependence on others.
Foresight in this field is sensitive. Scenarios about conflict or political change can be misread as predictions or positions. Good practice frames scenarios clearly, includes diverse perspectives from different regions, and focuses on implications for preparedness rather than on predicting events. Chatham House-style confidentiality rules can help participants speak openly, while published records state only what participants agree to release.
Long-term trends in demography, economic weight, resources and technology.
Contrasting futures for international order and cooperation, using scenario design and stress testing.
Exploring how specific shocks could propagate through trade, finance and security, using complex systems and agent-based modelling.
Political events depend on decisions by individuals and groups that are inherently hard to anticipate, and analysts' own perspectives shape what futures they consider plausible.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.