The Anticipatory Capability Fund awards Dr Fenna Okoro and Professor Verity Marris a grant to trigger the Oval's sunscreen-dispenser restocking from next-day heat forecasts rather than the empty-bottle reports that currently prompt it.
A new grant moves the Oval's sunscreen-dispenser refill trigger from the empty-bottle report to a next-day heat forecast, with a dashboard logging the gap between the two
The sunscreen dispensers bolted to the Oval’s fence line have refilled on the same signal since they went in: someone notices the pump running dry and files a Facilities report, usually a day or two after the sunniest stretch has already passed. The School of Emergent Priorities has been awarded an Anticipatory Capability Fund grant to replace that signal with one that arrives first.
The funded protocol pairs a next-day heat forecast with a restocking roster, moving the refill trigger ahead of the empty-bottle report by however many days the forecast allows, and logging the interval between forecast and refill as a readiness measure in its own right — the Fund’s first attempt to anticipate something nobody has gotten around to complaining about yet.
A forecast is only as useful as the first plan we’re willing to move because of it. Sunscreen felt like the safest possible thing to test that on.
— Dr Fenna Okoro, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Horizon Register, School of Emergent Priorities
Co-grantee Professor Verity Marris, Director of the Trajectory Analytics Group, said the project would settle a narrower question within a season: “whether a forecast can out-run a complaint, on something small enough that getting it wrong costs nobody very much.”
The grant carries $132,916 and a dashboard that will, for the first time, put a number on the distance between a forecast and a refill.
Anticipatory Capability Fund: Retiming the Oval's Sunscreen Restock From the Empty Bottle to the Forecast · $132,916 · awarded to Fenna Okoro, Verity Marris