Applying the Futures Wheel and Macrohistory to the Covid19 Global Pandemic

Abstract

This paper investigates the systemic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and experiments with using two foresight methods with different time horizons to broaden the exploration. The Futures Wheel of consequences is applied to the global shock and pandemic of COVID-19 to firstly analyse systemic impacts of the virus within a short to medium timeframe. Then, four macrohistorical models are applied, to time two probable future trajectories resulting from the bifurcation point of the pandemic. The conclusion provides: (1) insights on the methodology of integrating the Futures Wheel and Macrohistory and proposes that they are indeed complimentary if a common spatial scale is used to link them, and (2) that the city is a practical and effective spatial scale to integrate the methods and their systemic impacts, and (3) real world actions in response to the pandemic, at the scale of the city, that may require further research.