Robust Decision Making Methodology
Featured Article
Technology Interactions Among Low-Carbon Energy Technologies: What Can We Learn from a Large Number of Scenarios? — 2011
This paper uses a combinatorial approach in which scenarios are created for all combinations of the technology development assumptions that underlie a smaller, representative set of scenarios.
Managing Climate Risks in Developing Countries with Robust Decision Making — 2011
The authors present the concept of robust decision making (RDM), which draws on already-existing knowledge of practitioners to choose actions that are viable in both the short- and long-term.
Some Thoughts on the Role of Robust Control Theory in Climate-Related Decision Support: An Editorial Comment — 2011
Any successful response to climate change--both the challenges of limiting the magnitude of future climate change and adapting to its impacts--will clearly involve policies that evolve over time in response to new information and that are robust over a wide range of difficult-to-predict future conditions.
Thinking Inside the Box: A Participatory, Computer-Assisted Approach to Scenario Discovery — 2010
This paper systematically describes the scenario discovery concept and its implementation, presents statistical tests to evaluate the resulting scenarios, and demonstrates the approach on an example policy problem involving the efficacy of a proposed U.S. renewable energy standard.
Methods for Long-Term Environmental Policy Challenges — 2009
This article provides a concise overview of methods for analyzing policy choices that have been used in the study of long-term environmental challenges.
Shaping Tomorrow Today: Near-Term Steps Towards Long-Term Goals — 2009
These proceedings of a workshop called Shaping Tomorrow Today: Near-Term Steps Towards Long-Term Goals summarize the workshop, which focused on education, international policy, and climate change, and include the papers written for participants.
Methods for Long-Term Environmental Policy Challenges — 2009
This article provides a concise overview of methods for analyzing policy choices that have been used in the study of long-term environmental challenges.
A New Analytic Method for Finding Policy-Relevant Scenarios — 2007
Description of a new analytic method, based on robust decisionmaking, that could be applied to water resource management in California and climate change policy questions.
Managing the Risk of Uncertain Threshold Responses: Comparison of Robust, Optimum, and Precautionary Approaches — 2007
This study uses a simple computer simulation model to compare several alternative frameworks for decision making under uncertainty—optimal expected utility, the precautionary principle, and three different approaches to robust decision making—for addressing the challenge of adding pollution to a lake without triggering unwanted and potentially irreversible eutrophication.
A General, Analytic Method for Generating Robust Strategies and Narrative Scenarios — 2006
This study identifies robust, adaptive pollution-control strategies to help ensure economic growth and environmental quality for the 21st century.
Despite Deep Scientific Uncertainty, Long-Term Problems Can Be Tackled — 2006
This research brief describes an analytical approach developed by RAND to manage scientific uncertainty, which involves the use of computer programs to frame strategies that will work well across a wide range of plausible futures.
Shaping the Future — 2005
Authors have developed an alternative framework focused on flexibility--finding, testing and implementing policies that work no matter what happens.
Characterizing Climate-Change Uncertainties for Decision-Makers — 2004
Climate-change policy-making confronts a wide range of significant scientific and socioeconomic uncertainties. How experts should best characterize such uncertainties for decision-makers has emerged as an important debate within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-Term Policy Analysis — 2003
What should people do today to shape the next hundred years to their liking?
A New Decision Sciences for Complex Systems — 2002
Computer-Assisted Reasoning, an approach to decision-making under conditions of uncertainty suited to applying complex systems to policy analysis.
The Emergence of Peer Competitors: A Framework for Analysis — 2001
This report addresses the issue by developing a conceptual framework of how a proto-peer (meaning a state that is not yet a peer but has the potential to become one) might interact with the hegemon (the dominant global power).
Confronting Surprise — 2002
RAP methods may offer greater insight into the vulnerabilities inherent in several types of surprises.
Computer-assisted Reasoning — 2001
Computer models provide a powerful tool for reasoning about difficult problems.
New Methods for Robust Science and Technology Planning — 1998
In the fall of 1996, RAND researchers conducted a successful proof-of-concept demonstration for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of new methods for science and technology (S and T) planning.
Exploratory Modeling for Policy Analysis — 1993
Distinguishes these two broad classes of model use, describes some of the approaches used in exploratory modeling, and suggests some technological innovations needed to facilitate it.
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