Forecasting

What is it?

Forecasting means to predict a future condition or occurrence, calculate in advance, conjecture beforehand, or make a prediction
Forecasting is a term most commonly heard when discussing predicting the weather, though it can mean making predictions in other areas too, such as forecasting what will happen in the future with earthquake projections, global warming, geological structure, volcano eruptions etc.
An example of an advanced weather forecasting model follows to the right of these words.

What are the IT components?

Software programs allows scientists, environmentalists, geologists, etc. to make complicated calculations in order to predict what will happen in the future
The software programs run on machines such as computers, and may take up a large amount of space depending on how fast the program is wanted to run and how many calculations are being demanded of it

Advantages

Predicting the weather, for example, may save lives. For example, if a hurricane is scheduled to come through, such as when Hurricane Ike came through, people were warned and able to evacuate, decreasing the number of deaths caused by the storm. This may also be true with earthquake projections and volcano eruptions
Having an idea of what the weather will be on any given day can give people a better idea of how to plan their schedule.

Disadvantages

There is a great risk of inaccuracy with these computer models. If the models are inaccurate in the case of a hurricane, and many have been evacuated, it could be a false call and cause people to lose money or valuable time, and even to worry over a false cause. In addition, they may lose faith and so the next time when the hurricane really comes they may decide not to evacuate, causing many more deaths.
Not all computer models agree with each other. In the case of global warming specifically, not all models show it is really happening. In fact, some now are saying that global cooling is what is really happening. Who or which is right?

What are the social/ethical issues associated with it?

Reliability—not all the data is reliable, which could possibly be due to inaccuracy in the software programming. If the formulas are wrong, then the forecasts may not be correct.
Equality of Access—not every nation will be able to have forecasting software, although through the Internet more and more has been made possible, at least for communication when catastrophes are likely.
Policies and Standards—these must be set in order to know how many forecasting programs and models must agree before it is announced to the world that whatever it is will happen, or at least its predicted to happen. Otherwise, there may be great panic over nothing!
People and Machines—more and more people are relying on forecasting programs to predict the future and tell them what to expect and how to live. For example, with global warming people have changed how they live in order to protect the environment. But what if all these models were wrong? As people rely more and more on machines, life becomes more controlled by technology.

Sources

ltryus	Latest page update: made by ltryus , Apr 27 2009, 8:50 PM EDT (about this update About This Update forecast, forecasting, weather, global warming, prediction - ltryus 518 words added 1 image added view changes - complete history)
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