Welcome to this (temporary) landing page for current Foresight 3.0 projects in the Mind-Lab (Laboratory of Collective Intelligence)….

Climate-Proof

Embedding Disaster Adaptation & Resilience in Urban & Rural Planning

University of Manchester / Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee

13-14th October 2026

With 2027 projected to be the hottest in recent history, glaciers are melting, water systems are drying up, and forests are on fire – meanwhile we urgently need houses, roads, hospitals, schools, workspaces… How can all these fit together?

Climate-Proof looks ahead, beyond immediate events to underlying causes and transformations in progress. We look for risk combinations of natural, economic, social, and political systems, and then use such insights to design Climate-Proof pathways for medium and longer-term horizons.

This programme takes place over two days in October at IIT Roorkee, with an interactive workshop, in person and online. The program is based on the ‘Pathways Toolkit’, facilitated by Joe Ravetz, University of Manchester UK.

Participants will include policymakers, business, civil society, academics, and citizens. The result aims at a visionary and practical synthesis of such opportunities and pathways for up to 25 years, providing unique insights for official plans and programs at national, state and urban levels.

Overview

India is on the front line of many transformations – where climate change interacts with social change, urban development, economic restructuring, infrastructure and new patterns of travel, migration, tourism and pilgrimage.  The combinations are then both challenges and opportunities in a landscape which is increasingly unstable – in the mountain states where one-third of ice has melted in 40 years, and in the plains where 400 million people are in harm’s way.

The future of the subcontinent is then a huge open question – we cannot assume that recent trends will continue smoothly. We have to question and challenge established thinking, connect the dots in a bigger picture, and look at further horizons of change – this is the scope of foresight.

Foresight is an international set of methods, tools and platforms, with applications from international level to local communities.  We now use the latest version – Foresight 3.0 – with special focus on how all parts of society can learn, communicate, co-create, co-produce, and thereby build their ‘collective intelligence’.  Also we draw on the international program for harnessing the AI potential, as the combined Foresight-CHAI (‘Collective Human Artificial Intelligence’).

This programme is a pilot for what could follow on a larger scale. We aim to demonstrate in a short time by working with a wider group from right across the community as far as possible. We use creative / interactive methods to look for deeper layers of value and meaning, beyond the material development of roads, dams etc – with the cultural, social, psychological, even mythical layers of the human experience.  This then enables a further horizon of possibility and transformation, which then forms pathways / road-mapping for strategic economic, social, environmental or urban / rural development.

From this, we produce a summary report with illustrations, which opens the door to continuing debate and research, and contributes directly to official plans and strategies.

The Pathways Toolkit has four basic stages, each framed with a simple leading questions:  (with a strategic future framed as ‘2050’, a round number for medium-longer term thinking).

  1. What are the ‘Top 3 challenges’ – the current situation in your theme?
  2. How are things changing – the ‘Top 3 changes’ expected by 2050?
  3. What is the potential – the ‘Top 3 opportunities’ coming up by 2050??
  4. How to achieve them – the ‘Top 3 priorities’ for action, now / soon / later??

The program can also work in hybrid mode.  The visual templates shown in the programme below are all contained in a large online workspace, which has been developed and used in many projects around the world. Links will be provided in advance.

The program also works in parallel with the creative exploratory approach of ‘visioneering’. This is the theme of a follow up programme based in Mussoorie, October 18-28th 2026.

The draft program is yet to be finalized – an early version is here

Sign up with QR on the workshop poster;