Professors Tim Bedford, Colin Eden and Kim Swales from SBS are currently running an Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) Programme called "Investing in an uncertain future" together with colleagues Peter McKiernan from St Andrews and Simon French from Manchester. After the launch in July, two one-week meetings have been organised. The first was devoted to "Valuing future flexibility". Co-organised by Dr Alex Dickson, Dr Robert van der Meer and Dr Helena Pinto, the meeting featured a number of talks by international visiting academics on subjects such as valuation of non-market goods, discounting, behavioural economics and real options. The meeting also developed mapping principles around a case study on the future of electricity networks in the UK. The case was led by Colin Bayfield (Scottish Power), Michael McElhinney (Head of Energy Projects, Scottish Government) and Keith Bell (Department EEE, Strathclyde).
The recently completed October meeting, co-organised by Professor Fran Ackermann and Dr George Burt, was entitled 'Linking Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Futures analysis' and focused again on a case, this time Food Futures. It featured presentations from David Atkinson (former vice principal Scottish Agricultural College and convenor of recent Workstream on 'Access, Affordability and Security' developing Scottish Government Food and Drink Policy), Alistair Prior (Scottish Government Food and Drink Division), and Chris Foster (Manchester Business School).
Other experts spoke around themes of integrating scenario planning approaches with quantitative analysis and included Kees van der Heidjen, former professor of scenario planning at SBS.
More information about the programme, including its future activities and slides from previous meetings, can be found at the IAS website www.instituteforadvancedstudies.org.uk.