As we move into 2017 there is probably a long list of items that you are looking forward to tackling next year. In the past few months, we have witnessed some fascinating shifts in our national and global priorities and we are beginning to plan - as individual professionals, teams, leaders, organizations, and communities – how we will navigate the changing economic, social and political landscapes. Beyond the widely discussed political changes, there is also a host of technology trends and drivers that are working to redefine nearly every aspect of our lives. As we approach 2017, I wanted to share a few thought-provoking resources that I consider to be must-reads. Although there are many subjects worth exploring over the next few months, I wanted to highlight one area that is becoming exceedingly important.

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Self-driving electric cars could make car parks obsolete within the next 10 years and reduce air pollution to almost zero in Scotland's cities, an expert has predicted. The vehicles are likely to be commonplace by 2030, said Simon Tricker, of "smart cities" specialist UrbanTide, which uses technology and data to improve city planning. "Scottish local authorities are already thinking about what city streets will look like in a decade's time - and the answers are pretty astounding," he said. Private companies can't be trusted on driverless cars, minister warns Ford to offer driverless commercial vehicles by 2021 Driverless car safety revolution could stall over moral dilemma Ministers pledge to put UK at heart of driverless car revolution Private companies can't be trusted on driverless cars, minister warns "Self-driving cars won't need parking spaces in cities - they're likely to be rented rather than owned and will just head off and carry out their next journey after dropping passengers off. Many car parking spaces which we now take for granted will simply become obsolete. "The pace at which electric vehicle technology is developing means they're also likely to be electric, so will produce zero emissions as they're driven.

After three years of almost single-handedly juicing up the slow-growing economy, Janet L. Yellen and the Federal Reserve should be looking at easier days ahead. Yellen, in what will probably be her last full year as Fed chair, may finally get help from somewhere else in Washington. Tax cuts and infrastructure spending planned by President-elect Donald Trump, if backed by the Republican-controlled Congress, would lighten the load for a Fed whose easy-money policies have been the primary economic support for the nation. She is already breathing easier on the Fed's employment mandate; the jobless rate has fallen to a nine-year low of 4.6%. Inflation, too, is under control and, by all accounts, creeping toward the central bank's optimal level of 2%.

In March of 2016, a twenty-seven-year-old Syrian refugee named Rakan Ghebar began discussing his mental health with a counsellor. Ghebar, who has lived in Beirut since 2014, lost a number of family members to the civil war in Syria and struggles with persistent nervous anxiety. Before he fled his native country, he studied English literature at Damascus University; now, in Lebanon, he works as the vice-principal at a school for displaced Syrian children, many of whom suffer from the same difficulties as he does. When Ghebar asked the counsellor for advice, he was told to try to focus intently on the present. By devoting all of his energy to whatever he was doing, the counsellor said, no matter how trivial, he could learn to direct his attention away from his fears and worries.

The annual exercise of looking forward to all the exciting innovations the next year can reasonably be expected to bring is here once again. Last year at Telegraph tech we predicted 2016 would witness the rise of mobile payments, the creation of smart cities that can think and function autonomously, and the premiere of virtual reality in people's living rooms. Trials have proven artificial intelligence to be effective in suggesting treatments by analysing patients' genomes This year we've expanded our horizons somewhat to include moonshot projects, the social ramifications of technology and one disaster scenario. Here are our predictions of the technology events to come in 2017. Self-driving vehicles have arrived more swiftly than anybody thought: Google and Apple have been experimenting with the technology for years, the Autopilot mode on Tesla cars has clocked up over 200 million miles, and every carmaker is scrambling to get self-driving software into their vehicles.

Security is the gift that keeps on giving. There's always one more vulnerability to be exploited, one more household-name company that's about to be breached. So, it shouldn't be surprising that 2016 offered up some new lessons -- or, in some cases, things the industry already knew but needed a reminder about. It isn't exactly the rise of the robots, but the Mirai botnet proved that the Internet of Things (IoT) is easily exploitable. This is a possibility that's been lurking all along, but in 2016, it became real.

In some ways, tech in 2017 will be a steady progression from what came before it. Time marches on, and so too does the advance of technology. In other ways, though, it will be just as upended as the rest of the world by the unprecedented disruption that 2016 has left in its wake. The artificial intelligence revolution is well and truly upon us, but so far, the biggest players are venerable Silicon Valley titans such as Google, Amazon and Apple. That's partially because they have the money to hire teams full of PhDs at seven-figure salaries, but it's also because they have the data.

As Italy is slowly recovering from a series of deadly earthquakes, researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology of Genoa are developing a new generation of robots to work in disaster zones. The key to the four-legged robot, called HyQ, an acronym for "Hydraulic Quadruped", is its mobility. September ... Teton Capital Partners long / short strategy delivered 8.1% In 2014 Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) Emerging Markets Bond Fund Suffers Losses on Russian Bets Congress Could Be About to Give this Asset Class a Huge Promotion – Muni Bonds It appears there's no shortage of investor love for municipal bond funds.

Governments worldwide requested Facebook users' data nearly 60,000 times in the first half of 2016, a 27 percent increase over requests made in the second half of 2015, according to a Facebook bi-annual report published this week. In addition to government requests for user data, the report details which content Facebook restricts for violating local laws. The company says it studies each request carefully to determine whether or not it has merit, especially in emergency cases where imminent risk of serious injury or harm is involved. It ultimately handed over data in 80 percent of cases. The 27 percent jump for the latest reporting period compares to a 13 percent increase between the first and second halves of 2015, and 18 percent growth between the second half of 2014 and the first half of 2015.