Who We Are: Mission

The Foundation’s mission is to improve decision-making under conditions of deep uncertainty. We seek to develop better methods for analyzing deep uncertainty, demonstrate their effectiveness, and incorporate them into educational programs across various fields, including business, engineering, architecture, and military science. In a period of rapid and discontinuous change, historical trends lose their predictive power, and decisions based on existing data and those based on prior decisions may be of little value. Climate change may dramatically alter migration patterns and food production, and vanishing Himalayan glaciers may lead to military conflict as nations struggle to increase their share of diminishing water resources. AI may dramatically alter employment and the tax base, dramatically increasing the need for social services at the same time that funding for them declines. Unpredictable behavior by national leaders in the US and Russia makes defense planning more complicated. Deep uncertainty occurs when one or more types of information usually considered essential for planning is unreliable or unavailable. Planning is still necessary, especially flexible planning, but traditional algorithmic planning to maximize expected utility may no longer be possible. The Foundation develops and publishes methods for planning under deep uncertainty.