Improving Decisions in a Complex and Changing World

Climate change presents public and private sector decisionmakers with a fundamental quandary: how to address a potentially serious, long-term, and deeply uncertain threat. By waiting until new science and unfolding events eliminate much of the uncertainty, it may be too late for decisionmakers to act effectively. If they act without understanding the extent and contours of the problem, they risk making serious miscalculations.

RAND's work on improving decisionmaking under uncertainty has included work with several leading resource management agencies helping them to include the potential impacts of climate change in their long-term plans, including Southern California's Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA), the California Department of Water Resources, the California Energy Commission, Denver Water, and the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. RAND's work has also included hurricane protection and coastal restoration planning in Louisiana and flood risk mitigation for New Orleans.

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  Adapting to a Changing Colorado River: Making Future Water Deliveries More Reliable Through Robust Management Strategies 2013

  David G. Groves, Jordan R. Fischbach, Evan Bloom, Debra Knopman, Ryan Keefe

  The 2012 Colorado River Basin Study evaluated the resiliency of the Colorado River system over the next 50 years to climate change and other factors, and then compared different options and strategies for ensuring successful management of the river's resources. This report describes RAND's contribution to this study. It focuses on the Robust Decision Making methodologies used to identify vulnerabilities and compare portfolios of options.

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  Addressing Climate Change in Local Water Agency Plans: Demonstrating a Simplified Robust Decision Making Approach in the California Sierra Foothills 2013

  David G. Groves, Evan Bloom, David R. Johnson, David Yates, Vishal K. Mehta

  This report describes an approach for planning under deep uncertainty, Robust Decision Making (RDM), and demonstrates its use by the El Dorado Irrigation District (EID). Using RDM, the authors and EID tested the robustness of current long-term water management plans and more robust alternatives across more than 50 futures reflecting different assumptions about future climate, urban growth, and the availability of important new supplies.

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  Ensuring Robust Flood Risk Management in Ho Chi Minh City 2013

  Robert J. Lempert, Nidhi Kalra, Suzanne Peyraud, Zhimin Mao, Sinh Bach Tan, Dean Cira, Alexander Lotsch

  This study demonstrates how robust decision making can help Ho Chi Minh City develop integrated flood risk management strategies.

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  An Evolutionary Model of Industry Transformation and the Political Sustainability of Emission Control Policies 2013

  Steven C. Isley, Robert J. Lempert, Steven W. Popper, Raffaele Vardavas

  Limiting climate change will require transformation of energy and other systems. This report presents an agent-based, game theoretic model designed to compare the long-term sustainability of alternative carbon emission reduction policies. The model tracks the co-evolution of an industry sector, its technology base, and political coalitions that influence government policy. It uses robust decision making methods to compare alternative policies.

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  Improving the Contribution of Climate Model Information to Decision Making: The Value and Demands of Robust Decision Frameworks 2013

  Christopher P. Weaver, Robert J. Lempert, Casey Brown, John A. Hall, David Revell, Daniel R. Sarewitz

  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.

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  Is it Ethical to Use a Single Probability Density Function? 2013

  Robert J. Lempert, David G. Groves, Jordan R. Fischbach

  Describes Robust Decision Making, one of a new class of methods for quantitative analysis that addresses both quantitative analysis and ethical reasoning.

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  Robust Water-Management Strategies for the California Water Plan Update 2013: Proof-of-Concept Analysis 2013

  David G. Groves, Evan Bloom

  This report describes a proof-of-concept analysis using Robust Decision Making to evaluate water resource management response packages for California's Central Valley under future uncertainty. This analytic approach will be used to develop a more comprehensive analysis for the California Water Plan Update 2013.

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  Scenarios That Illuminate Vulnerabilities and Robust Responses 2013

  Robert J. Lempert

  This paper proposes a particular conceptualization of scenarios that aims to address many of the challenges faced when using scenarios to inform contentious policy debates.

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