Pardee Center Projects

Pardee Center staff participate in myriad projects at RAND and with collaborating universities on research that involves Robust Decision Making. Some of these projects are highlighted here.

  • Flooding in Ho Chi Minh City

    Scenarios on Demand to Allow Users to Consider Vulnerabilities of Climate Policies

    Researchers are developing an online tool that lets users choose a policy goal then virtually stress-test the policy over thousands of plausible futures to identify the factors that highlight when the policy will meet or miss the goal.

  • Culvert with a drop, with flowing water

    Robust Decisionmaking May Help EPA's National Water Plan Manage Climate and Other Uncertainties

    Maintaining safe and reliable water supplies depends on timely investments in water treatment, storage, and delivery infrastructure. RAND undertook a project for the EPA to determine the utility of Robust Decision Making (RDM) methods for evaluating the agency's needs and priorities under the National Water Program.

  • Women and children collecting water from the unimproved water source of Asengo Community. Asengo Community, Kisumu, Kenya

    Enhancing the Climate Resilience of Africa's Infrastructure

    Working with the World Bank, RAND researchers used robust decision methods to provide the first continent-wide evaluation of the potential effects of climate change on such investments. They also examined the potential impacts of climate change on five specific hydropower and irrigation projects.

  • Evaluating Robust Water Management Strategies for the Colorado River Basin

    RAND worked with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Colorado River Basin states to apply innovative robust decision methods to evaluate thousands of plausible futures on the Colorado River and develop and compare strategies to address future vulnerabilities.

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    Examining Analytic Tools to Evaluate Policies for Market Transformations

    Limiting climate change requires a transformation of energy and transportation systems. RAND researchers designed a policy simulation tool and supporting decision framework to examine how alternative designs of market-based policy instruments might or might not facilitate such transformations.

  • Vietnamese woman paddling a boat

    Ensuring Robust Flood Risk Management in Vietnam

    Ho Chi Minh City faces significant and growing flood risk. Recent risk reduction efforts may not work if climate and socio-economic conditions diverge from earlier projections. Robust decision making can help Vietnam's largest city develop integrated flood risk management strategies despite this uncertainty.

  • Reaper drone

    Robust Defense Planning Under Conditions of Complexity And Deep Uncertainty

    In an era of growing uncertainty and corresponding complexity in the global security environment, the U.S. Defense Department has asked RAND to improve the value and character of defense resource planning by applying its robust decision making methodology to the area of national security.

  • Adaptive Management of the L.A. Metropolitan Water District's Integrated Resources Plan

    The 2010 Integrated Resource Plan Update developed by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District (MWD) includes a preferred resource mix as well as an adaptive management approach to monitor key trends and modify the resource mix as necessary. RAND helped the MWD determine which trends are most useful to monitor.

  • earth systems model from nsf

    Informing Climate-Related Decisions with Earth Systems Models

    An interdisciplinary grand challenge seeks to develop next-generation Earth System Models (EaSMs) not only to improve fundamental scientific understanding of the climate and related systems but also to improve decision makers' ability to proactively plan for the impacts of climate variability and change.