As scientists learn more about how the environment responds to human activity, it has become an area of increasing concern to the global community. RAND research has helped inform policies and direct further studies of environmental issues, from building efficiency and natural resource management to risk management and decisionmaking in the face of deep scientific and economic uncertainties.
Commentary
Contaminated drinking water contributes to the deaths of some 750,000 children under the age of five every year due to diarrheal disease. A RAND project is using mobile phones to increase the sales and use of safe-water filters in Kenya.
Commentary
An aircraft's capacity and speed largely determine the rate at which water or retardant can be applied to a fire. Very large air tankers (VLATs) certainly have the capacity to apply large amounts of fluids to a fire, but because of the distances travelled they may not be able to get a second load very quickly.
Commentary
The path to climate change preparedness should start at the intersection of resilience and robustness — that is, building resilient communities with the individuals and organizations within those communities making robust decisions, ones designed to work well over a wide range of ever-changing conditions.
Report
Media and policy sources often cite natural resources as a primary driver of tensions in the South and East China Seas. In reality, the region’s hydrocarbon potential is moderate. Resource issues function primarily as focal points for more powerful underlying drivers of domestic political legitimacy, popular nationalism, and regional order.
Commentary
A conservative, cost-efficient response to climate change involves sending price signals to people and businesses now so that they take steps to reduce emissions, writes Keith Crane.
Past Event
Declines in energy consumption because of substantial improvements in efficiency and surging production of natural gas, oil, and renewable energy have brought the United States to the brink of energy independence. Join RAND to learn more about shifts in U.S. energy markets.
Report
If policies aimed at large reductions of carbon dioxide emissions are enacted, more carbon capture and storage will be needed. RAND researchers explored the ability of the industrial base to support the expansion of carbon storage.
Report
This is a comparative study of the practice of those who are subject to regulatory requirements in the health research, medical drugs, environmental and financial sectors conducted to assist understanding of health research governance in the UK.
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.
Commentary
Instead of setting an arbitrary Production Tax Credit value, we could provide a tax credit based on the social value of clean electricity generation, writes Constantine Samaras.
Report
Energy security strategies are needed because DoD installations rely on the U.S. commercial electricity grid which is vulnerable to disruption from natural hazards and actor-induced outages, such as physical or cyber attacks.
Report
The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute was established after Hurricane Katrina to inform policies for long-term recovery and economic development in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. This two-page flyer highlights some of its research.
Commentary
Further study, including primary data collection in regions where extraction is occurring, will be important to track the magnitude of emissions and to insure that the DEP's permit requirements are adequate to protect human health and the environment, writes Aimee Curtright.
Blog
The 2013 SOTU address will be remembered for its impassioned call for greater gun control just two months after Sandy Hook. But President Obama's second-term agenda can be characterized by its sheer breadth, reflecting the broad range of policy challenges facing the U.S. today.
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
This article explores the differences between transnational and domestic terrorism, further differentiating by private versus government targets, to estimate the effect of exogenous catastrophic shocks on a country's level of domestic and transnational terrorism.
Commentary
Carbon dioxide has garnered the most attention in the climate change debate because it accounts for the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions. But there is good reason to worry about methane, say Nicholas Burger and Noreen Clancy.
Blog
In this video, Jordan Fischbach discusses how RAND helped Louisiana develop its 2012 Coastal Master Plan and key lessons that can make other communities more resilient in the face of natural disasters.
Journal Article
Producing natural gas from shale generates air pollutant emissions. RAND researchers provided a first-order estimate of air emissions, and the monetary value of the associated damages, from the extraction of shale gas in Pennsylvania.
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