PYTHIA (Predictive methodologY for TecHnology Intelligence Analysis) is a project proposal submitted to the European Defence Agency’s Preparatory Action on Defence Research programme. Its objective is to develop an innovative methodology for performing strategic technology foresight in the defence context.
The problem tackled by PYTHIA is three-faceted:
- It is difficult to perform technology foresight, since it is extremely hard to retrieve all the traces left by R&D development, from which detecting the trends that make future technology foresight possible;
- It is difficult to establish the correctness of a forecast if numbers are not used for evaluating the forecasters’ opinions and if the success of those forecasters is not assessed by using numbers;
- It is difficult to escape from the cognitive biases which forbids the forecasters, also in case well-prepared expert, to elaborate rational answers.
The PYTHIA consortium is characterised by a wide geographic coverage, with partners coming from 6 different European countries. The participant organisations represent Ministries of Defence, think tanks specialised on strategy and defence issues, technology providers and integrators.
Besides the consortium members, the PYTHIA project also relied on Stakeholder Group (SG) composed of 24 external stakeholders from 14 countries, which brought expertise in the 3 key domains addressed by the project (defence, strategy and technology), thanks to the participation of representatives from other European MoDs (Italian, Greek and Belgian), as well as world-class analysts and forecasters.
Documentation
PYTHIA flyer ENGPYTHIA Project Partners
Amongst the PYTHIA supporters
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Preparatory Action for Defence Research – PADR programme under grant agreement No. 800893