David R Johnson

Biography

David Johnson is an assistant policy analyst at RAND and a doctoral fellow in public policy at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Johnson has a primary research interest in long-range planning under deep uncertainty. His work typically focuses on applications in the environmental sphere, such as renewable energy production, flood risk mitigation, and water scarcity management. He was the lead modeler of the publicly available Calculating Uncertainty in Biomass Emissions (CUBE) model, developed for the National Energy Technology Laboratory, and the Coastal Louisiana Risk Assessment (CLARA) model, developed for the state of Louisiana's 2012 Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast.

Johnson's dissertation consists of three papers related to his involvement on the Master Plan's Risk Assessment team. They describe advances in statistical methods for estimating flood risk, present an overall description of the CLARA model along with damage estimates associated with scenarios analyzed in the Master Plan, and identify cost-effective strategies for nonstructural mitigation methods like elevating homes. He is also working to adapt the CUBE model to evaluate optimal tradeoffs between greenhouse gas emissions, water scarcity, and agricultural displacement when meeting mandated U.S. standards for renewable fuel production. His work is strongly interdisciplinary, encompassing statistics, economics, operations research, policy analysis, and risk management.