RAND has contributed more to thinking about how to deal with the longer-range future than any other organization. The methodological work at RAND started in the late 1950s and 1960s with the developments of the Delphi method and scenario analysis. This work continued sporadically through the 1970s and 1980s—and since the 1990s—computational technology has enabled new futures methodologies such as Robust Decision Making and Scenario Discovery.
RAND is again leading the way in putting these methods to use in dealing with the challenges of the future. Below is a list of publications that exemplifies RAND's work on Robust Decision Making methodology and applications.
This study evaluates the performance of Lima, Peru's current drought management plan against future droughts and proposes augmentations, and it recommends ways to ensure that the drought management plan performs will in the uncertain future.
This open access book focuses on both the theory and practice associated with the tools and approaches for decisionmaking in the face of deep uncertainty.
Decisionmakers often seek predictions about the future to inform policy choices. But a reliance upon analytic methods that require them can prove counter-productive and sometimes dangerous in a fast-changing, complex world.
This chapter presents two case studies that demonstrate how DMDU methods, in particular Robust Decision Making (RDM) (see Chap. 2), can help develop robust long-term strategies.
This chapter seeks to provide a thematic connection between the theory and application chapters that preceded it and the emerging needs of public policy decisionmaking processes.
The decision analysis community faces obstacles in moving new methods, tools, and paradigms from theory to practice, partly because of the difficulties in demonstrating value proposition. In this report, RAND researchers use a structured comparison game to examine the value proposition of different analytic inputs (scenario-based versus Robust Decision Making) on a sample U.S. Department of Defense decision about force structure.
This essay explores how AI might be used to enable fundamentally different future worlds and how one such future might be enabled by AI algorithms with different goals and functions than those most common today.
This study developed a framework consisting of long-term models for electricity supply and water systems management, to assess the vulnerability of potential electricity infrastructure expansion plans to the effects of climate change in Africa.
