An ability to visualize the future, even in the face of uncertainty, led to the recent creation of Ferrovial Vertiports: a new business area established to develop vertiport networks.
Ferrovial is increasingly aware of the importance of exercising foresight to enable it to anticipate and explore the future. These are futures that may have an impact on the company in the distance, but preparations are being made now. It is no longer possible to probe the future based on what we know from the past and the present. We need new approaches and processes to enable good decision-making.
Ferrovial launched the Foresight initiative three years ago with the What if? program. Under this program, four projects have been implemented to date in the areas of mobility and infrastructure, specifically: urban air mobility, hyperloop, urban logistics, and connected autonomous vehicles.
The methodology is scenario planning, which consists essentially of producing a range of plausible scenarios, in the form of narratives or stories, that may emerge in the long term. Instead of trying to predict a single most likely future and gambling everything in the process, the aim is to visualize scenarios that could occur as a result of changes to the variables that influence the system being considered. Only by experimenting with such processes, using people’s inherent capacity to imagine the future, and freeing participants from cognitive assumptions and biases, can we create the necessary ability to foresee and prepare for the future.
