Developing New Future Scenarios for the U.S. Coast Guard's Evergreen Strategic Foresight Program

Abstract

This report documents support by Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center (HSOAC) to the U.S. Coast Guard's Evergreen strategic foresight activity. The objective was to help develop scenarios that postured Evergreen to better bridge the gap between future challenges and near-term plans, which typically focus on the urgent needs of the present. HSOAC analysts reviewed prior Evergreen activities, examined Coast Guard strategy-making and planning processes, adapted an approach for developing scenarios, and narrated a set of exemplar global planning scenarios. Although the scenario development process and resulting example scenarios focused on a Coast Guard planning context, the approach and considerations described in this report might be useful to other organizations with long-range planning needs.

Existing and Emerging Topics and Potential Priorities for the Safety and Security of the Maritime Environment

“…The literature review examined strategy, academic, and public media documents obtained through Google searches (Bueger, Edmunds, and Ryan, 2019;Fickling, 2022;Germond and Mazaris, 2019;Koehring, 2022;Okafor-Yarwood, 2020;Paris, 2022;United States Coast Guard [USCG], 2018; United States Navy, United States Marine Corps, and USCG Tri-Service Strategy, 2020; U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 2019). We also leveraged the team's diverse expertise to identify important topics for policymakers and planners (e.g., Resetar et al, 2020;Tingstad et al, 2020;Vedula et al, 2023;Wirth et al, 2021).…”