CASE NOTE

Water Systems Between Foresight and Operations

CASE NOTE

Water Systems Between Foresight and Operations

Foresight Camp Borovoe (Kazakhstan)

Published September 2025

Context

The Foresight Camp in Borovoe, Kazakhstan (09/2025), organized by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and SIMCON Foresight (Kazakhstan) brought together Kazakh entrepreneurs, representatives of ministries, and finance institutions. The keynote addressed drinking water as critical infrastructure, framed through a classical foresight architecture: trend analysis, Tech Delta, backcasting, and role definition along the value chain.

This case note does not assess the vision, the technology, or the strategic ambition. It examines the decision and risk logic observable in the room – and the friction between formal foresight models and real-world execution. The observations in this case note are based on a keynote impulse on smart water systems delivered at the camp.

Formal Foresight Models vs. Execution Reality

The keynote followed a clean and internally consistent foresight structure:

Identification of trends (climate stress, water loss, sectoral conflicts
Technological trajectories (sensor systems, IoT, platforms, digital twins
Backcasting towards 204
Role positioning within the future value network

Analytical observation
The model is logically coherent but largely execution-neutral. It implicitly assumes

stable and capable operators
reliable data availability
institutional enforcement capacity
financing continuity across political cycles

In the Kazakh context, these assumptions are contingent, not structural

Where Governance Assumptions Break Down in Operations

A structural tension emerged in discussions:

Public actors reason in targets, roadmaps, and regulatory horizons
Entrepreneurs and operators reason in cash flow, maintenance, staffing, and downtime

Water systems are not primarily innovation systems; they are operations-heavy systems:

Leakage reduction rarely fails due to missing technology, but due to maintenance
Data exists, but is often not embedded in decision-relevant workflows
Platforms increase visibility, not automatic action

Judgement

The greater the distance between a model and day-to-day operational logic, the higher the implementation risk – even when the technology itself is mature.

Risk Visibility Without Decision Authority

The keynote explicitly referenced emerging risks (cyber, physical attacks, drones). What matters analytically is not risk enumeration, but system response capacity:

Who carries responsibility in case of failure
Who prioritizes investments between resilience and expansion
Who decides under uncertainty – operator, municipality, state

Observation

Formal strategies tend to catalogue risks. Operational systems must absorb them. This distinction remained implicit rather than operationalized

Incremental Decisions Under Short Risk Horizons

For many participants, the relevant horizon was not 2040, but

the next drought cycle
the next budget decision
the next political shift

This produces an incremental decision logic:

pilots instead of systemic transformation
modular solutions instead of platforms
repair before digitization

Implication
Backcasting provides orientation, but real decisions follow short risk chains, not long strategic narratives

What the Foresight Format Reveals — and What It Cannot Decide

The value of the foresight format did not lie in its future vision, but in the gap it exposed between

strategic plausibility and
operational decision-making capacity

Judgement
Under real industrial conditions, foresight is not a steering instrument. It is an assumption stress-test. Its analytical value lies where friction becomes visible – not where consensus is produced.

Further material (contextual, non-analytical):

Event website: [Link]