DMUU: Integrating Methods and Identifying Priorities

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Climate change challenges our ability to make decisions under uncertainty. The increasing ability to make predictions of key meteorological variables as much as two years in advance adds to the challenge. While forecasts of future conditions are fraught with uncertainty, they have increasing predictive ability. A number of tools and methods have been developed in various disciplines to aid in making decisions under uncertainty, including risk analysis, environmental valuation, institutional design, and public participation. But it is not clear how most of these can be applied to typical decisions made in the face of uncertainty about climate change; nor is it clear how well these tools make use of existing scientific information.This project will hold two workshops and a public symposium that will bring together scientists expert on climate change impacts, researchers who have worked on decision making methods and tools, and those who have to make critical decisions in the face of uncertainty about climate change. The goals of the project are to inform scientists about the kinds of research that will help decision makers deal with climate change and to inform decision makers about the knowledge, tools, and methods that already exist and may be of help to them. The project will result in an integration and synthesis of literatures on decision support methods that are not well integrated at this point. The project also will produce both an agenda for future research and guidance for decision makers about the strengths and weaknesses of existing tools. Products from the workshops will be disseminated to the broader community. This developmental award was supported as part of the Fiscal Year 2003 Human and Social Dynamics priority area special competition on Decision Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU).