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Comparing Alternative U.S. Counterterrorism Strategies: Can Assumption-Based Planning Help Elevate the Debate? – 2008
The United States faces the challenge of countering the terrorism threat. Frequently, both expert decisionmakers and lay citizens have trouble assessing alternative strategies to address such issues because of the emotions they engender and of the deep uncertainty involved. This briefing reports on two sets of workshops that attempted to use assumption-based planning (ABP) to help contentious groups more systematically debate alternative U.S. counterterrorism strategies.
Creating Constituencies For Long-term, Radical Change
March 2007 — Robert Lempert gave a talk on how Congress might create constituencies for long-term, radical change as part of The Congressional Decisionmaking Project: Legislating for the Future. This ongoing project is exploring how Congress and the Presidency can strengthen their capacity to address policy questions that have significant long-term impacts. Lempert’s talk used climate change as his example for how long-term change could be implemented.
Change in the List of 50 Books for Thinking About the Future
March 2007 — Religious expert Karen Armstrong's book, The Battle for God, was added to the list of 50 books for thinking about the future. It replaces Reza Aslan's excellent book, No God But God. Aslan's book does a good job of covering religious fundamentalism in Islam, but Armstrong's book covers religious fundamentalism in Islam as well as in Christianity and Judaism.
RAND Pardee Center Researcher Robert Lempert on NPR
February 2007 — Robert Lempert was interviewed on National Public Radio providing his thoughts on the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
Listen to the interview 
Research by Robert Lempert 
Hot Topic: Climate Change
Improving Congressional Legislation for the Longer-Range Future
December 2006 — Pardee Center Director, Jim Dewar, spoke at the inaugural conference of The Congressional Decisionmaking Project: Legislating for the Future in Washington, D.C. Funded by the John Brademas Center for the Study of Congress and the Smith Richardson Foundation, the project will explore how Congress and the Presidency can strengthen their capacity to address policy questions that have significant long-term impacts on conditions of great uncertainty. Dewar spoke on “Improving Legislation on Long-Range Issues” for the event that was carried live on C-SPAN2. The RAND Pardee Center will be involved with this ongoing project and further talks will be posted as they are prepared.
Pardee Center Researchers Give Talks on Containment for Pandemic Influenza
October 2006 — Steven Bankes and Sam Bozzette gave talks at a Workshop on Modeling Community Containment for an Influenza Pandemic convened by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. Their talks described recent work at RAND on non-pharmacological measures for containing pandemic influenza.
Jim Dewar Gives Keynote Address at 2006 DORS Symposium
September 2006 — Pardee Center Director, Jim Dewar, gave the keynote address at this year's Defence Operations Research Symposium (DORS) in Canberra, Australia. The DORS 2006 theme was "Solving the Problem Right" (following on last year's theme of "Solving the Right Problem") and Dewar's address was on "Handling Uncertainties Right."
Dewar also spoke at the Australian Department of Defence and at DSTO offices in Sydney and Adelaide.
Steven Popper in Futurist Lecture Series at World Future Society Annual Conference
July 2006 — RAND Senior Economist and Pardee Center researcher, Steven Popper, was invited to present a session in the Futurist Lecture Series at the 2006 World Future Society Annual Meeting in Toronto, Canada. Popper presented a talk on robust decisionmaking with an application to the long-term future of the Social Security System in the United States.
Despite Deep Scientific Uncertainty, Long-Term Problems Can Be Tackled
June 2006 — Our nation and the world often have a difficult time addressing long-term problems. In part, such problems are so complex and contingent that scientists cannot make definitive predictions about them. Facing such deep uncertainty, how can leaders avoid becoming paralyzed by it?
RAND researchers have been fundamentally rethinking the role of analysis under conditions of deep scientific uncertainty and have constructed rigorous, systematic methods for dealing with that uncertainty. Their basic approach involves the use of computer programs to help frame strategies that will work well across a wide range of plausible futures. Rather than seeking to eliminate uncertainty, the approach highlights it and finds ways to manage it.
Steven Popper Inducted into AAAS
December 2005 — RAND senior economist Steven Popper has been awarded the distinction of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow. Election as a Fellow is an honor bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers.
Popper is being "honored for outstanding research, teaching, and management contributions in science and technology policy, critical technologies analysis, and industry/government/academic partnerships."
This year's AAAS Fellows were announced in the journal Science on October 28 and will be recognized for their contributions to science at the Fellows Forum on February 18, 2006, during the AAAS Annual Meeting in St. Louis, Mo. Popper has also been elected to a three-year term as a AAAS Council member representing the Industrial Science and Technology section.
AAAS, founded in 1848, is the world's largest general scientific society, serving 10 million individuals.
Popper is a co-author of the Pardee Center's report, Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis, and is a frequent contributor to Pardee Center research.
Read more (www.aaas.org)
Using Books to Think About the Future
October 2005 — While there is no sure path to improving the future human condition, there is no shortage of books that address themselves to some aspect of improving that future.
If we were to peer backward from, say, 50 years hence at the books available today, we could probably identify dozens or hundreds that had something useful to say had we only listened. From today’s perspective, however, it is difficult to identify those insightful passages, let alone the books that contain them, from among the thousands that address some aspect of the future.
But suppose we tried for something more modest – a list of 50 books covering broad topics that seem likely to be important in thinking about the future human condition. What might that list of 50 books look like?
Shaping the Future in Scientific American
May 2005 -- Science has become an essential part of decision making by governments and businesses, but uncertainty can foil decision-making frameworks such as cost-benefit analysis. People often end up doing nothing or taking steps that worsen the long-term outlook. In the April 2005 issue of Scientific American, RAND authors Steven W. Popper, Robert J. Lempert and Steven C. Bankes describe an alternative framework they have developed, focused on flexibility--finding, testing and implementing policies that work well no matter what happens. Using this framework, policies can have built-in mechanisms to change with the circumstances. For climate change, one such mechanism is a "safety valve" to ensure that emissions reductions occur but do not get too expensive.
Researchers Investigate New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis
August 2003 — The checkered history of predicting the future – e.g., "Man will never fly" – has dissuaded policymakers from considering the long-term effects of decisions. New analytic methods, enabled by modern computers, transform our ability to reason about the future.
Robert J. Lempert, Steven Popper, and Steven C. Bankes, the authors of a new RAND Pardee Center report, Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis, demonstrate a quantitative approach to long-term policy analysis (LTPA).
Robust methods enable decisionmakers to examine a vast range of futures and design adaptive strategies to be robust across them. Using sustainable development as an example, the authors discuss how these methods apply to LTPA and a wide range of decisionmaking under conditions of deep uncertainty.
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