Foresight support systems: The future role of ICT for foresight

The article represents an introduction to the emerging field of foresight support systems. There is a growing interest in the design, accessibility, application and development of ICT-based systems for foresight processes by foresight practitioners and researchers alike. The foresight discipline applies more than 30 different techniques to obtain valid and profound conclusions about future developments and scenarios. Until now, only a few of these techniques have been transferred into reliable software applications. However, this situation is changing quickly and many prototypes and ICT applications are being developed throughout the world. Moreover, there has been a recent trend to develop even more complex software suites that embed and interlink multiple techniques. In order to respond to the dynamic progress in the field, we introduce this Special Issue on the future role of ICT in foresight. We selected nine informative articles that present the most recent research on foresight support systems, which form the basis for ongoing scientific debate in this new research stream.