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

关于全球气候变化及其影响的科学研究充满了不确定性。公共政策的决定需要近期的科学判断，因为科学事实多年后才会为人所知。本研究对气候变化对全球生态影响背景下的专家判断的启发进行了研究。该研究通过要求专家构建问题，提出模型，并对其模型的重要参数给出判断来推广启发方法。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。一个两阶段的启发过程用于引出专家对以下方面的看法：(1)结构、度量和关键不确定系数的值，这些不确定系数应该用于构建问题；(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)对潜在意外来源的敏感性和识别能力；(4)不同数量的研究投资可以实现的不确定性（在他们的专业领域和其他气候变化相关问题上）的减少量。这些启示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.