---
id: media/handbook-of-anticipation
about:
  label: Handbook of Anticipation
  description: >-
    Reference work in 77 entries on anticipation, the use of the future in
    decisions, drawing on biology, the social sciences, the humanities,
    engineering and computer science; Springer, 2019.
  tags:
    - anticipation
    - futures studies
    - foresight
    - reference
    - decision making
book:
  authors:
    - Roberto Poli (ed.)
  publisher: Springer
  year: 2019
  isbn: '9783319915531'
  url: 'https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-319-91554-8'
domains:
  - people
relations:
  - predicate: about
    target: terms/foresight-and-anticipation
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: >-
        Handbook of Anticipation: Theoretical and Applied Aspects of the Use of
        Future in Decision Making | Springer
      url: 'https://link.springer.com/referencework/10.1007/978-3-319-91554-8'
    - title: 'Crossref: chapters of Handbook of Anticipation'
      url: 'https://api.crossref.org/works?filter=isbn:9783319915548&rows=100'
    - title: 'Open Library: Handbook of Anticipation'
      url: 'https://openlibrary.org/works/OL20664206W'
  created: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed: '2026-11-02'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Roberto Poli, of the Department of Sociology and Social Research at the University of Trento, edited this handbook; its full title is Handbook of Anticipation: Theoretical and Applied Aspects of the Use of Future in Decision Making.[^1] Springer published it in 2019, in 77 entries and 1,753 pages.[^1][^3] Poli was awarded the first UNESCO Chair in Anticipatory Systems, and heads a master's programme in social foresight.[^1]

The handbook argues that anticipation is a serious research topic that can and should be connected to futures studies.[^1] It uses the anticipatory viewpoint as a common frame for the human and social sciences, and aims to turn them "from their dominant past-orientation to a new future-orientation".[^1] Its contributors come from biology, ecology, psychology, the social sciences, the humanities, engineering and computer science, and it includes a historical overview of earlier thinkers, among them Bertrand de Jouvenel and Robert Rosen.[^1]

Among its entries, A. H. Louie writes on the mathematical foundations of anticipatory systems and on relational biology, and John Kineman on anticipatory life and a definition of sustainability.[^2] Others cover anticipatory games and simulations, anticipatory networks, anticipatory disaster risk reduction, anticipation in robotics and in artificial intelligence, futures literacy, and vision making in large urban settings.[^2]

For a team building a predictive model of a place, the handbook puts the theory that runs from [Anticipatory Systems](/media/anticipatory-systems/) and [The Art of Conjecture](/media/the-art-of-conjecture/) next to applied work on risk, cities and simulation games.[^1][^2]