About INFER
INFER (INtegrated Forecasting and Estimates of Risk) uses crowdsourced forecasting to generate early warning and signals about the complex future that policy and decisionmakers must act upon. It involves an ecosystem of forecasting platforms that aggregate the diverse perspectives of a global community inside and outside the U.S. government.
We support U.S. policymakers in governmental organizations such as the Intelligence Community, the Department of Defense, and the Department of State among others.
Mission
Advance the forecasting capability of the U.S. Government through collective intelligence solutions to bolster decision analysis.
Goals
INFER’s strategic goals are focused on delivering impact in line with our mission:
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Prepare government stakeholders to identify, decompose, and prioritize the high-risk, high-impact issues of the future they need to understand and monitor.
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Generate a more precise and nuanced rendering of the future through aggregated probabilistic assessments and rationales.
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Bring a diverse, outside perspective to government decisionmaking that can improve bias and minimize blind spots.
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Build a forecasting ecosystem that adds rigor to—and is easily integrated into—the process of decision analysis.
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Create a track record for forecasting and provide performance feedback, thus improving individual and collective forecasting capability that benefits society.
Solutions We Work On
INFER’s forecasting ecosystem is designed to support government stakeholders in three primary areas.
Early warnings for national security
Use forecasting insights to identify early indicators of threats and influential events.
Risk assessment and evaluation
Understand the probability of risk posed to missions, programs, or strategy.
Resource allocation and prioritization
Get signals about the future landscape that directly impact resource decisions and policy.
The INFER Team
INFER is led by RAND with support from Cultivate Labs.
About RAND
RAND is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. To learn more about RAND, visit rand.org/about.
About Cultivate Labs
Cultivate Labs strives to bring more rigor and diverse perspectives to decision and policy-making processes in large organizations by leveraging the process and insights of crowdsourced forecasting. Cultivate's products and services are used by many governments, Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and think tanks around the world.
Interested to work with INFER?
If you are a U.S. government decisionmaker or analyst interested to learn more about how INFER can support your analysis needs, let's connect.
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