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

关于气候决策的讨论往往或含蓄地或明确地假定，可以建立准确的预测模型，说明气候将如何变化，这些变化将产生什么生态和社会经济影响，以及适应这些变化和限制温室气体排放的替代政策和战略的相对成本和影响是什么。在现实中，这些事情的预测准确度都存在严重的局限性。气候决策中心将开发和演示方法来表征这些不可减少的不确定性。它将特别关注气候的不确定性和能源系统未来的不确定性，因为能源部门是温室气体排放的主要来源。该中心将致力于创建、说明和评估包含此类不确定性的决策策略。它还将制定方法，审查个人和机构决策者的选择所产生的广泛社会后果，特别是对能源系统的影响。认识到气候和气候政策往往会在许多决策者的考虑中扮演很小的角色，该中心的方法将是在决策者所处的公共政策、经济和社会环境的更广泛背景下对待气候。中心的调查人员都有自然科学和社会科学的背景。该中心设在卡内基梅隆大学工程和公共政策系，但其工作涉及斯坦福大学、加州大学伯克利分校、太平洋西北国家实验室-马里兰大学全球变化联合研究所、不列颠哥伦比亚大学、卡尔加里大学和波茨坦气候影响研究所(PIK)的研究人员。气候决策中心将开发和演示一套新方法和决策分析工具，以解决涉及高度且往往无法减少的不确定性的问题。与此同时，由于解决实际问题是在气候变化等复杂领域推进基本方法的最佳方式，该中心还将解决公共和私营部门决策者面临的具体问题。这项实用工作包括下列方面面临的问题：面临气候变化和低碳能源技术构成的直接和间接风险的保险管理人员；太平洋西北和加拿大西部的森林、渔业和生态系统管理人员；关心平衡经济发展和传统土著生活方式的北极区域决策者；电力公司管理人员面临关于发电和多种污染物排放控制的资本投资决策。该中心正在开发和示范的方法和办法将普遍适用于气候变化和能源技术领域以外的广泛其他问题。该中心将培养的博士生将结合强大的技术、社会科学和决策分析技能，为他们解决各种重要的社会问题做好准备。该奖项作为2003财政年度人类和社会动力优先领域不确定性决策特别竞赛的一部分得到了支持。

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).