Adaptive Policies, Policy Analysis, and Civil Aviation Policymaking

This is one of three volumes constituting the final report from a study performed by RAND Europe for the Netherlands Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water Management, Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment, and Ministry of Economic Affairs in support of their jointly-sponsored project called "Future of Dutch Civil Aviation Infrastructure." One of the tasks in the study was to develop a framework for policymaking in a rapidly changing and uncertain environment. This adaptive policymaking process (APP), described in this report, explicitly recognizes the fact that policies will be adjusted as the world changes and as new information becomes available. The APP is based on the concepts of Assumption Based Planning. It includes a `stage setting' step that makes policy objectives explicit, identifies policy options and develops a definition of policy success, and successive steps that assemble a basic policy, identify key vulnerabilities of the policy, separate actions to be taken now from those that can or should be deferred until more information becomes available, develop signposts for monitoring changes in the world and triggers for various contingency plans, and establish limits to the validity of the analysis leading to the policy that, once violated, should lead to a reassessment of the policy.