About the series
Optimizing Humanity's Outlook This Century is a research report series by H Heuristics, published open access, one report at a time.
The series asks one question: which choices would most improve humanity's outlook over the rest of the twenty-first century? Each report takes a part of that question and works it through with public data and stated assumptions.
The starting point is that the century can become more dangerous while lives still improve, provided development reduces exposure and vulnerability faster than hazards grow. The reports give priority to the Global South, where most future population growth, development opportunity and climate vulnerability meet.
What the series covers
- Sustainable convergence. Closing the gap between richer and developing economies without repeating the environmental damage of past growth.
- Diffusion of innovations. Getting proven technologies and practices, from clean cooking to digital public infrastructure, to the people who do not yet have them.
- Emerging economies. Where most future population growth, development opportunity and climate vulnerability meet, and where the century will largely be decided.
- Vulnerability and resilience. Reducing exposure to interconnected crises before they strike, and counting the lives and person-years of deprivation avoided.
How the reports are written
Reports draw on public data and on institutional and peer-reviewed research, and they say what was computed and with which assumptions. Projections are scenarios, not forecasts. Cross-country associations are reported as associations, not as causal estimates. The concepts the series uses, among them Sustainable Convergence, Preventive Development Economics and Polycrisis Resilience, are proposed frameworks that are open to testing, criticism and revision.
Access and licensing
Every report is free to read and download, with no registration and no paywall. Each report page states the licence that governs that report; the series default is CC BY 4.0, which allows sharing and adaptation with attribution.
How to cite
Each report page carries a ready-made citation in APA, Chicago and BibTeX form. Reports are numbered twice: once within this series (No. 01, No. 02 and so on) and once in the organisation-wide H Heuristics Research Report series (HH-2026-65, for example). Cite the HH number, and the DOI where a report has one, since the DOI is the most stable reference.
Report pages also expose Google Scholar citation tags, Dublin Core tags and schema.org data, so the series can be indexed like any other working-paper series. Metadata for the whole series is available as JSON, and new reports are announced on the RSS feed.
Contact
Corrections, questions and requests are welcome through H Heuristics.
01Companion reports
Related reports on the same question
Two earlier H Heuristics reports take on the same question from different angles. They are published on other H Heuristics sites.
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H Heuristics Research Reports · HH-2026-65
Optimizing Humanity's Outlook This Century
Which choices would most improve humanity’s outlook this century? Public-data ledgers, a test of multiple development dividends across 131 economies, a ranking of twelve interventions and a six-dimension Century Outlook Dashboard.
Read the report researchreports.hheuristics.com
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Polycrisis Resilience Series · No. 56
The Top Ways to Optimize Humanity's Outlook This Century
Ranks nine high-leverage interventions for the Global South with two scoring systems, and models three scenarios to 2100 under the idea of multidimensional optimization.
Read the report polycrisisresilience.hheuristics.com