Technological Forecasting
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Judgment-Based Technological Forecasting Techniques
Relevance Trees Most major technological development projects are complex. Their fulfillment is likely to depend on the accomplishment of substantial improvements on existing technologies. These advances are not usually coordinated. Many products result from technological changes that were not originally intended to provide them assistance. The planner must be able to distinguish a large number of potentially supporting technologies and to forecast their futures. Relevance trees, a slight variant of the network analysis discussed earlier, are of great aid in such work. Relevance trees can be used to study a goal or objective, as in morphological analysis, or to select a specific research project from a more general set of goals, as in network analysis. The methodology of relevance trees requires that the planner determine the most appropriate path of the tree by arranging, in a hierarchical order, the objectives, subobjectives, and tasks in order to ensure that all possible ways of achieving the objectives have been found. The relevance of individual tasks and subobjectives to the overall objective is then evaluated. An example of a relevance tree is shown in Figure 14. The objective is to develop a means of air pollution control. The subobjectives "Develop Petroleum . . ." and "Develop Alternatives . . ." further define the main objective. Tasks and subtasks are then defined. once all the "good" alternative ways of achieving the subobjectives have been found, the relevance of individual solutions to the main objective can be evaluated. 
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