HS AC
A N FFRDC OPER AT E D BY R A N D U N D ER C O N T R ACT W I T H D H S
HOMELAND SECURITY
OPERATIONAL ANALYSI S CENTER
MICHELLE D. ZIEGLER, ABBIE TINGSTAD, KATHERINE ANANIA, AARON C. DAVENPORT,
REBECCATISHERMAN, SCOTT SAVITZ, MICHAELE. LINICK, SUSANA. RESETAR, MELISSA BAUMAN
Back to the Future
A Refresh of Future Scenarios for
Project Evergreen Strategic Foresight
Activities
T
his report focuses on updating the scenarios used for Project Evergreen’s strategic foresight
process within the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). Strategic foresight enables organizations to
anticipate and prepare for potential scenarios and shift from reactive to proactive planning
and decisionmaking. Evergreen’s scenarios follow a structured and systematic approach to
generating plausible alternative futures based on stressors in the economy, geopolitics, sociocultural
issues, climate and the physical environment, and technology. The methodology emphasizes fami-
lies of scenarios combined with shock events to encourage strategic discourse and prioritize risks
and opportunities.
The initial scenario development conducted during the prior phase of Project Evergreen (Ever-
greenV) involved defining the problem or decision at hand, generating stressors and shocks, creat-
ing scenario families, designing exemplar shocks, and combining scenario families and shock events
to create different future challenges
and solutions.
1
Five years after the
previous scenarios were written,
EvergreenVI takes the next step:
reviewing and revising the original
scenarios.
The update is needed because
the global and national environments
have changed, the original scenarios
presented what once were long-term
challenges that are now closer to
fruition, and the scenarios have been
used repeatedly and are no longer as
challenging for participants. Addi-
tionally, the scenarios incorporate
new research on the economy, geo-
KEY MESSAGES
■ The current scenarios that Project Evergreen participants use
for thinking through missions were developed in 2019, prior to
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the coronavirus disease2019
(COVID-19) pandemic. They have already been used multiple
times in Evergreen workshops and games. Because of this, they
no longer provide the mental challenge and thinking that make
strategic foresight exercises useful.
■ The six-step process that the RAND research team used to
update the scenarios is the same as the process used to create
the original set in 2019. The update incorporates emerging U.S.
Coast Guard focal areas, such as Antarctica, activities in the sea-
bed, and space.
■ The four new scenarios more accurately reflect the current state
of affairs and will be used in future focal-area workshops and the
Paratus Futurum strategic game that are the primary activities of
EvergreenVI.
Research Report
