DMUU: Climate and Related Decision Making in the Face of Irreducible Uncertainties

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Discussions of climate-related decision making often assume, either implicitly or explicitly, that accurate predictive models can be developed of how the climate will change, what the ecological and socio-economic impacts of those changes will be, and what the relative costs and implications will be of alternative policies and strategies for adapting to those changes and to limit the emissions of greenhouse gasses. In reality, there are serious limitations on how accurately any of these things can be predicted. The Climate Decision Making Center will develop and demonstrate methods to characterize these irreducible uncertainties. It will focus in particular on uncertainties about climate and uncertainties about the future of the energy system because the energy sector is a leading source of emissions of greenhouse gasses. The center will work to create, illustrate, and evaluate decision strategies that incorporate such uncertainties. It also will develop methods to examine the broad social consequences, particularly for energy systems, of choices by individual and institutional decision makers. Recognizing that climate and climate policy often will play a small role in the considerations of many decision makers, the center's approach will be to treat climate in the broader context of the public policy, economic, and social environments in which decision makers operate. Center investigators have backgrounds in both the natural and the social sciences. The center is based in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, but its work involves investigators at Stanford, UC Berkeley, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory-University of Maryland Joint Global Change Research Institute, the University of British Columbia, the University of Calgary, and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). The Climate Decision Making Center will develop and demonstrate a set of new methods and decision analytic tools for addressing problems that involve high, and often irreducible levels of uncertainty. At the same time, because working on real problems is the best way to advance basic methods in a complex domain such as climate change, the center also will address specific problems faced by public and private sector decision makers. This applied work includes problems faced by: insurance managers with exposure to direct and indirect risks posed by climate change and by low carbon energy technologies; forest, fisheries, and ecosystem managers in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada; Arctic-region decision makers concerned with balancing economic development and traditional indigenous life styles; and electric utility managers facing capital investment decisions about generation and multi-pollutant emissions control. The methods and approaches being developed and demonstrated by the Center will have general applicability to a wide range of other problems beyond the domain of climate change and energy technology. The doctoral students the center will educate will combine strong technical, social science, and decision-analytic skills that will prepare them to work on a wide variety of important societal problems. This award was supported as part of the Fiscal Year 2003 Human and Social Dynamics priority area special competition on Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU).