Volume 17, Issue 1, February 2007, Pages 73–85
Uncertainty and Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation
Edited By Suraje Dessai, Karen O’Brien and Mike HulmeM
A new analytic method for finding policy-relevant scenarios
- RAND, 1776 Main Street, Santa Monica, CA 90407, USA
- Received 19 May 2006, Revised 20 November 2006, Accepted 20 November 2006, Available online 25 January 2007
Abstract
Scenarios play a prominent role in policy debates over climate change, but questions continue about how best to use them. We describe a new analytic method, based on robust decision making, for suggesting narrative scenarios that emerge naturally from a decision analytic framework. We identify key scenarios as those most important to the choices facing decision makers and find such cases with statistical analysis of datasets created by multiple runs of computer simulation models. The resulting scenarios can communicate quantitative judgments about uncertainty as well as support a well-defined decision process without many drawbacks of current approaches. We describe an application to long-term water planning in California.
Keywords
- Scenarios;
- Climate change;
- Uncertainty;
- Water management
Copyright © 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
