Paper short abstract:

The paper pays attention to the temporal modalities generated by EPS and highlights what kind of futures this new technology produces, but perhaps more crucially, what kind of relationship to time is created and maintained through those new forecasting capacities.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on science and technology studies, this paper looks at the implication of the so-called Ensemble Prediction Systems (known as EPS, which are medium-term forecasts (4-15 days ahead) that are now central to extreme weather predictions worldwide), for the future of the political. Although the development of EPS has been a catalyst for research in climatology, computer science, meteorology and hydrology, their social and political dimensions have received very little attention from the social sciences and humanities. Thus, the paper seeks to understand what probabilistic forecasting at the heart of EPS means to the definition of 'being in common' in the wider context of the Anthropocene. By looking at the development and application of the European Flood Awareness Systems (EFAS) developed by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC) and the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the paper pays attention to the temporal modalities generated by EPS and highlights what kind of futures this new technology produces, but perhaps more crucially, what kind of relationship to time is created and maintained through those new forecasting capacities. Finally, by looking more closely at EPS and their applications to flood risk management in Europe, the paper argues that not only risk instruments such as forecasting tools are materialising the modern ideal of grasping the future, but that they are also contributing to the creation of a quantificational locked-in syndrome, whereby imagining the future outside the confinement of risk is preventing the interrogation of collective actions to take place.