43 INTERNATIONAL FUTURES: History and Status

The INTERNATIONAL FUTURES (IFS) global model was developed for education and theory building. There are two versions: a smaller one developed specifically for microcom-puters and a larger one initially developed for mainframes but now being revised for micros. The model represents global demographic, agricultural, energy, and economic systems. Incorporation of domestic governmental processes and interstate behavior is foreseen. Keywords world modeling, global modeling, international futures, simula-tion, modeling. This paper provides a brief historical review and status report on the IN-TERNATIONAL FUTURES (IFS) model and modeling project, the develop-ment of which began in 1978-79.1 We look in turn at project purposes, the model structure, and probable future efforts. Purposes The project has two central purposes. The first is to make global models available for educational use. The experience of the 1970s, while often overselling the policy analysis potential of world models, did indicate that world models have a considerable capability to educate in at least three ways: 1. They communicate much substantive information, such as eco-nomic and demographic sizes and growth patterns of states and re-gions, the fossil resource base, or environmental loads. 2. They incorporate and therefore can communicate the theoretical structures which economists, demographers, and other scientists ap-ply in trying to understand and forecast. In addition to representing theory, large-scale integrating models indicate the areas in which theory is especially weak or nonexistent