Researchers frequently require a quantitative understanding of the likely consequences of different actions before they can advise decisionmakers and design effective policies. RAND develops and uses statistical, econometric, and other exploratory models and simulations to analyze the potential outcomes of different policies in a range of areas such as transportation usage, health care, patient safety, and military campaigns.
RAND Europe's "Choice Modelling and Valuation" group provides specific expertise in using discrete choice modeling methods to understand and predict choice behavior as a result of policy intervention. This work is frequently undertaken in the transport sector, but expertise is increasingly applied in sectors including health and social care, post and communications, and provision of regulated consumer services.
Report
This report challenges the assumption that the timing of deployments and their distribution over time are serially independent, arguing that military interventions occur in temporal clusters driven by the number of interventions in the recent past.
Report
Details a prototype computational model that seeks to explain, as a function of contributing factors, the extent of public support for insurgency and its use of terrorism. The model is believed to be reusable and suitable for composition.
Journal Article
Research linking high-quality child care programs and children's cognitive development has contributed to the growing popularity of child care quality benchmarking efforts such as quality rating and improvement systems (QRIS).
Report
The authors identified and characterized population groups that would likely be interested in enrolling in the multistate plans established by the Affordable Care Act and developed a methodology to project participation and estimate premiums.
Report
This paper describes a new approach and associated search schemes for optimization under uncertainty. Analysts can apply this method to a problem with a significantly larger number of decision variables, uncertain parameters, and uncertain scenarios.
Research Brief
Quantitative analysis is often indispensable to sound planning. But with deep uncertainty, predictions can lead decisionmakers astray. Robust Decision Making supports good decisions without predictions by testing plans against many futures.
Research Brief
The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana used a new analytic approach, developed in part by RAND, that incorporates results from predictive models in a decision tool to allow formulation and comparison of alternatives.
Journal Article
The authors design and test a model to predict surge capacity bottlenecks at a large academic medical center in response to a mass-casualty incident (MCI) involving multiple burn victims.
Research Brief
The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana used a new analytic approach, developed in part by RAND, that incorporates results from predictive models in a decision tool to allow formulation and comparison of alternatives.
Journal Article
Increasing digitalization and the evolution of the Internet have had, and are still having, an impact on the demand for postal services.
Journal Article
This paper reviews the need for, use of, and demands on climate modeling to support so-called 'robust' decision frameworks, in the context of improving the contribution of climate information to effective decision making.
Journal Article
Within the DSM-IV, PTSD symptoms are rationally classified as assessing one of three symptom domains: reexperiencing, avoidance/numbing, or hyperarousal. However, two alternative four-factor models have been advocated as superior to the DSM-IV framework.
Report
This report presents analysis that compares the PLANET long-distance model and the Department for Transport's long-distance model (LDM) and helps to inform which components of both models might be used to develop an improved HS2 Ltd model.
Report
The Transportation Security Administration's RMAT has enabled a more sophisticated understanding of terrorism risks to the air transportation system, but TSA should not treat RMAT results as credible estimates. Rather, the results can help to inform the components of terrorism risk and possible influences of system changes on that risk.
Blog
Lloyd S. Shapley, a longtime RAND researcher who is now an emeritus professor at UCLA, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics jointly with Alvin E. Roth for his work on game theory.
Research Brief
PortMan, RAND's new portfolio analysis and management methodology, provides a means for decisionmakers to find the optimal portfolio of projects, maximizing the probability of filling a desired set of requirements while restraining costs.
Research Brief
The Coastal Louisiana Risk Assessment (CLARA) model estimates hurricane flood depths and damage and enables evaluation of potential flood risk reduction projects for inclusion in Louisiana's 2012 Coastal Master Plan.
Report
Describes a model developed by RAND to estimate flood depths and damage that occurs as a result of major storms in Louisiana's coastal region and to evaluate potential projects for inclusion in the state's 2012 Coastal Master Plan.
News Release
A new method for estimating the costs of counterfeiting was published today by RAND Europe. The approach uses market data to estimate the effects of intellectual property rights infringements, such as counterfeit products, on sales of legitimate goods.
Report
Globalization, integrated markets, and the Internet economy have contributed to the rise in IPR infringements. RAND developed a methodology based on economic theory to contribute to quantifying the scope, scale, and impact of IPR infringements, such as counterfeiting, unauthorized downloads, and piracy.
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