Your foresight
means the world.
Join a global community making forecasts on critical
issues and trends sent directly to U.S. Government policymakers.
“INFER is the future of American forecasting”
University of Pennsylvania Perry World House, A Roadmap to Implementing Probabilistic Forecasting Methods
Crowdsourced forecasting is a process that enables a large group of people to combine their individual forecasts into a “crowd” or “consensus” forecast that often generates a more accurate forecast than individual experts.
INFER gets requests from policymakers about what they need to understand about the future. We then agree on a question that best represents what they want to know. From there, our team goes through a process of “decomposing” that broad question into the individual questions you see on INFER.
Learn more about our decomposition process.
INFER creates regular reports of forecasting outputs for policymakers to use in their analysis and decision-making process. These come in the form of quarterly updates, or alerts about notable movement in the consensus forecasts.
See examples of these reports.
Watch this brief video to see how INFER’s crowd insights serve as a “warning signal” to bolster national security and intelligence.
INFER is run by the Applied Research Laboratory for Intelligence and Security (ARLIS) at the University of Maryland, a University Applied Research Center (UARC) funded by the Department of Defense, in partnership with Cultivate Labs.
INFER supports U.S. Government policymakers in elements of the Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, State Department, and other Departments throughout government.
By leveraging the power of the crowd, the goal of INFER is to provide early warning and a more diverse perspective about the future to bolster the national security and intelligence of the U.S. and its allies.
If you are a policymaker interested in working with INFER on a strategic question or issue, or have a community of people who would be interested in making forecasts, contact us at
[email protected].
Your intellectual growth
is part of the journey
"I learn more than I ever thought that I would about some of the most important issues facing the U.S., while also influencing decisions on the same topics."
— Anthony Cordetti, INFER forecaster
Build critical thinking & reasoning skills through forecasting
Attend online events
with policymakers & thought leaders
Get monetary rewards
& qualify for paid forecaster programs
Engage with a diverse, global community of fellow forecasters
Access to the same reports & analysis as policymakers
Take online training to hone your forecasting skills
Ways to get involved
Join a growing community from leading universities, professional societies, and companies around the world
“Forecasting forces me to assess my own biases going into an issue. I’m also constantly surprised by the ways the other forecasters think about factors going into their forecasts -- it is so easy to get trapped in our epistemic bubbles and crowd forecasting helps reorient our thinking."
— Trisha Ray, INFER forecaster