Improving Expert Elicitation Through Studies of Climate Change and Its Possible Impacts

全球气候变化及其影响的科学被不确定性所主导。公共政策决策需要近期的科学判断，因为科学事实要数年后才会为人所知。本研究以气候变化对全球生态环境的影响为背景，对专家判断的启发式进行研究。本研究通过邀请专家对问题进行组织，提出模型，并对模型的重要参数进行判断，从而概括了启发式方法。与以前的专家判断工作相比，这种方法给了专家更多的自由来表达他们的观点。两个阶段的启发过程被用来引出专家对以下问题的看法：(1)应用于框架问题的结构、度量(S)和关键不确定系数的值；(2)在其专业领域和其工作所依赖的其他领域的关键发现的可靠性(包括共识报告的可靠性)；(3)他们对潜在意外来源的敏感度和识别能力；以及(4)通过不同数量的研究投资可以减少不确定性(在他们的专业领域和其他与气候变化有关的问题上)的程度。这些启发将帮助我们更好地定义主导气候变化问题的不确定性的特征，阐明如何在科学界内衡量知识和研究的可靠性，并为研究分配提供指导。

The science of global climate change and its impacts is dominated by uncertainty. Public policy decisions require near term scientific judgments, since the scientific facts will not be known for years. This study conducts research on the elicitation of expert judgment in the context of the global ecological impacts of climate change. The study generalizes elicitation methods by asking experts to structure the issues, propose a model, and the give judgments about the important parameters of their model. This approach gives the experts more latitude to express their views compared to prior work in expert judgment. A two-stage elicitation process is used to elicit the expert's views about: (1) the structure, the metric(s), and the value of key uncertain coefficients that should be used in framing the problem; (2) the reliability of key findings in their field of expertise and in other fields upon which their work depends (including the reliability of consensus reports); (3) their sensitivity to and ability to identify the potential sources of surprise; and (4) the amount of reduction in uncertainty (in their field of expertise and in other climate change related issues) that could be achieved with various amounts of research investment. These elicitations will help us to define the character of uncertainties dominating climate change issues better, shed light on how the reliability of knowledge and research is gauged within the scientific community, and provide guidance on research allocations.