Tuesday 19th October, 10am, Guthrie Theatre, UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building. In his talk, Hajkowicz reported the outcomes from a CSIRO global foresight project. It presents five megatrends and eight megashocks (global risks) that will redefine how the world’s people live. While most of these observations were not surprising and perhaps predictable, perhaps an evidence-based forecast of this nature might stir and alert some people and authorities into action. In particular, global environmental changes and expanding population will require different attitudes towards spending, conservation, sustaining and resource management. A detailed version of the findings can be found at http://www.csiro.au/resources/Our-Future-World.html The megatrends presented in this document are based on analyses of over 100 trends contributed by over 40 scientists and business development staff across CSIRO on the Futures1 SharePoint site: http://teams.csiro.au/sites/Futures
A global risk, or 'megashock', is a significant and sudden event; the timing and magnitude of which are very hard to predict. The report identified eight megashocks relevant to Australian science: asset price collapse; slowing Chinese economy; oil and gas price spikes; extreme climate change related weather; pandemic; biodiversity loss; terrorism; and nanotechnology risks.
