Hughes, B. B., Solórzano, J., & Rothman, D. S., Irfan, R. I., Sahadevan, D. (2025, November 11). IFs energy model documentation. Pardee Center for International Futures, Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, University of Denver. https://pardeewiki.du.edu/index.php?title=Energy

What is our purpose? Who do we serve? How do we know we are making an impact?

These questions guided the Pardee Institute's 2025 strategic planning cycle, enabling us to strengthen our value system and establish a framework for fulfilling our mission and achieving our vision during uncertain times.

Building on the foundation of its predecessor 2020 five-year plan, this plan honors the continuing core identity of the Institute, staying rooted in what makes our work distinctive and useful, and distilled for practicality and purpose.

The Pardee Institute 2025 Strategic Plan, launched in the Fall of 2025, details our primary motivations and our approach to strategic planning. It connects our institutional history to our vision for its future, explains the intention behind our mission, vision, values, and high-level strategic goals for this cycle, and reflects on our current position relative to these goals, as well as possible pathways to realize them.

Here, we are pleased to share our strategic plan, which serves as our statement of purpose and decision-making framework through 2030.

Annual Update for the Pardee Institute for International Futures, 2024-2025.

The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system is central to much of the Pardee Institute’s work, constantly helping us to understand, explore, and communicate the complex reality in which we live and the alternative futures that might be brought into being. This report features an introduction to our 2025 Strategic Plan, an in-depth look at our areas of research, highlights of the student experience at Pardee, and a detailed list of events, presentations, and publications from this past year.

Annual Update for the Pardee Institute for International Futures, 2023-2024.

The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system is central to much of the Pardee Institute’s work, constantly helping us to understand, explore, and communicate the complex reality in which we live and the alternative futures that might be brought into being. Over the past year, main thrusts of model development included: (1) strengthening the model’s representation of global crises (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic); (2) enhancing analysis of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); (3) improving our ability to analyze the pursuit of food security; (4) supporting data initialization; and (5) continuing to improve its User Interface.

Turner, S., Neill, C., Hughes, B.B., Narayan, K. (2024, June 6). Guide to scenario analysis in International Futures (IFs). Frederick S. Pardee Institute for International Futures.

The purpose of this document is to facilitate the development of scenarios with the International Futures (IFs) system. This document supplements the IFs Training Manual. That manual provides a general introduction to IFs and assistance with the use of the interface (e.g., how do I create a graphic?). In turn, the broader Help system of IFs supplements this manual. It provides detailed information on the structure of IFs, including the underlying equations in the model (e.g., what does the economic production function look like?).

This document should help users understand the leverage points that are available to change parameters (and in a few cases even equations) and create alternative scenarios relative to the Base Case scenario of IFs (e.g., how do I decrease fertility rates or increase agricultural production?). It proceeds across the modules of IFs, such as demographic, economic, energy, health, and infrastructure, to (1) identify some of the key variables that you might want to influence to build scenarios and (2) the parameters that you will want to manipulate to affect your variables of interest. The Training Manual will help you actually make the parameter changes in the computer program and the Help system will facilitate your understanding of the structures, equations and algorithms that constitute the model. We begin by introducing the types of parameters within IFs and then proceed to a discussion of variables and parameters within each of the IFs modules.

Annual Update for the Pardee Institute for International Futures, 2022-2023.

The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system is central to much of the Pardee Institute’s work, constantly helping us to understand, explore, and communicate the complex reality in which we live and the alternative futures that might be brought into being. Over the past year, main thrusts of model development included: (1) strengthening the model’s representation of global crises (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic); (2) enhancing analysis of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); (3) improving our ability to analyze the pursuit of food security; (4) supporting data initialization; and (5) continuing to improve its User Interface.

Annual Update for the Pardee Center for International Futures, 2021-2022.

The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system is central to much of the Pardee Center’s work, constantly helping us to understand, explore, and communicate the complex reality in which we live and the alternative futures that might be brought into being. Over the past year, main thrusts of model development included: (1) strengthening the model’s representation of global crises (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic); (2) enhancing analysis of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); (3) improving our ability to analyze the pursuit of food security; (4) supporting data initialization; and (5) continuing to improve its User Interface.

Annual Update for the Pardee Center for International Futures, 2020-2021

The International Futures (IFs) forecasting system is central to much of the Pardee Center’s work, constantly helping us to understand, explore, and communicate the complex reality in which we live and the alternative futures that might be brought into being. Over the past year, main thrusts of model development included: (1) strengthening the model’s representation of global crises (in this case, the COVID-19 pandemic); (2) enhancing analysis of progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); (3) improving our ability to analyze the pursuit of food security; (4) supporting data initialization; and (5) continuing to improve its User Interface.

Annual Update for the Pardee Center for International Futures

A decade has passed since the release of the first two volumes in the Center’s Patterns of Potential Human Progress (PPHP) series. Those volumes, published jointly by Paradigm and Oxford University Press India, were Reducing Global Poverty (2009) and Advancing Global Education (2010). The volumes broke new ground in research in the two issue areas by looking out across 50 years in over 180 countries and by incorporating treatment of their respective subject matter within an extensively integrated model system.

Prior to the work undertaken for the volumes, the International Futures (IFs) system did not contain separate representation of either poverty or education, but it did include strong models of demographics and economics as a foundation for them. Generous support from Frederick S. Pardee made it possible to develop extensive models not only for poverty and education, but also for health, infrastructure, and governance (the subjects of the three later volumes in the PPHP series) within the IFs system. Reducing poverty and advancing education remain central to global goals for improving the wellbeing of individuals and societies. Where are we now, 10 years after the publication of these first two volumes in the PPHP series?

— BARRY HUGHES & MOHAMMOD IRFAN