We are a multi-disciplinary association of professionals dedicated to improving decision making under deep uncertainty. Deep uncertainty exists when parties to a decision do not know, or cannot agree on, the system model that relates action to consequences, the probability distributions to place over the inputs to these models, which consequences to consider and their relative importance. Deep uncertainty often involves decisions that are made over time in dynamic interaction with the system.

We invite decision makers, practitioners, analysts, researchers, academics, and students to join us.

Our Goals

• Research. Improve understanding and advance the capabilities of theory, methods, and tools for decision making under deep uncertainty.
• Practice. Help public and private sector organizations make better decisions by encouraging widespread practical application of the knowledge, methods, and tools for decision making under deep uncertainty.
• Education and Training. Provide training and training materials for scholars, practitioners, decision makers, and the public.
• Dissemination. Disseminate knowledge about decision making under deep uncertainty methods and tools, and their applications in practice.
• Career Development. Help members to pursue and develop their careers in decision making under deep uncertainty.
• Community. Provide a community and a professional network where members can share ideas, foster collaboration, benefit from support and feedback, and be inspired and energized through interactions with their peers.

The leadership team

• President – Rob Lempert (RAND)
• Vice President – Jan Kwakkel (Delft University of Technology)
• Membership – Judy Lawrence (New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington)
• Communication & Outreach – Marjolijn Haasnoot (Deltares & Delft University of Technology)
• Funding & Career Development – Oliver Schwabe (Rolls-Royce & Cranfield University)
• Education & Training – Steven Popper (RAND)
• Rules & Processes – Rebecca Smith (University of Colorado)
• Administrator – Andrea Golay (RAND)

2017 Workshop Committee

• Local committee: Jim Hall, Cameron Hepburn, Eelco Koks, Raghav Pant, Steve Rayner, Scott Thacker, Will Usher (University of Oxford);
• External committee: Julie Rozenberg, Laura Bonzanigo, Edoardo Borgomeo (World Bank), Laurna Kaatz (Denver Water);
• Leadership Team: Rob Lempert, Steven Popper(RAND), Marjolijn Haasnoot (Deltares & Delft University of Technology), Oliver Schwabe (Rolls-Royce & Cranfield University).

Subcommittees

Communication & Outreach is supported by Edoardo Borgomeo (University of Oxford), James Derbyshire (Middlesex University), Kim Smet (Harvard University)

The membership task is supported Sarah Jeong (New Zealand Treasury)

Submit a publication or blog

Do you want a reference to your publication on the website? Please submit it at: www.deepuncertainty.org/submit-a-recent-publication

To submit your own blog, please go to this page: www.deepuncertainty.org/submit-a-blog

People

Andrea Golay is a project associate at the RAND Corporation where she contributes to policy research through modeling and simulation, operations research methods, and project management assistance. Her research interests include emerging technology, decision sciences, and military logistics. http://www.rand.org/about/people/g/golay_andrea_a.html

Edoardo Borgomeo works on water resources management, risk-based decision-making and climate change adaptation. He is an honorary research associate at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford and a water resources consultant based in Washington DC.  http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/people/eborgomeo.html

James Derbyshire is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR), Middlesex University. His research focuses on scenario planning, innovation and economic development. A particular area of interest is non-probabilistic methods for thinking about the future, such as Potential Surprise Theory and antifragility. https://www.mdx.ac.uk/our-research/centres/ceedr/staff/staff-link-assets/derbyshire-james

Jan Kwakkel is an associate professor at Delft University of Technology. His research focusses on model-based support for decision making under deep uncertainty. He is the lead developer of the exploratory modelling workbench, an open source toolkit for scenario discovery and related deep uncertainty techniques. He has applied his work in various domains, including climate and water, and transport.

Judy Lawrence is Senior Research Fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research Institute at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. She leads research programmes on climate change impacts and implication, on resilience governance and the adequacy of institutions for climate change adaptation decision making. She has developed, in partnership with Deltares, the Netherlands, the application of the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways (DAPP) planning for decision making under conditions of uncertainty. She currently is Co-Chair of the New Zealand Governments Climate Change Adaptation Technical Working group preparing a national adaptation response. She previously held senior management positions in the New Zealand government and received her PhD in Public Policy from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Julie Rozenberg is economist with the Chief Economist of the World Bank Sustainable Development Group. Her research includes climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, green growth and disaster risk management. She also supports World Bank teams and clients with operations research to take climate change constraints and other long-term uncertainties into account in the preparation of projects and strategies in infrastructure sectors like energy, transport, water or urban.

Kim Smet is a PhD researcher at Harvard University in Water Resource Engineering. Her research focuses on long-term infrastructure planning under uncertainty, exploring how we can design physical systems that have greater flexibility to adapt to future changes. She has applied elements of Adaptation Tipping Points and Engineering Options to the question of reinvesting in ageing water management systems in the United States and the Netherlands.

Laura Bonzanigo is a Policy Analyst at the World Bank, where she specializes in decision support. In particular, she helps teams use analysis and stakeholder engagement to design good long term plans and projects, despite uncertainty about climate change and other factors, and amid complex stakeholder interests. Prior to joining the World Bank, Laura was a researcher at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei in Italy and before that, she worked on several irrigation management and rural development projects in the Middle East, Africa, and Central America. Laura holds a PhD in Climate Change Economics from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, a MSc in Irrigation and Water Management from the University of Wageningen, and a MA in Social Anthropology from the University of Edinburgh.

 Laurna Kaatz is the climate scientist and adaptation program manager for the Planning Division at Denver Water. Her primary responsibility is to coordinate climate investigations and implement the findings into the planning process. Laurna’s work incorporates many areas of water resource planning, including climate and drought planning, operational and water rights analysis, and long range integrated resource planning. Before her career at Denver Water, Laurna was a Professor of Physics at Sweet Briar College, and then went on to work as a climate science researcher with Aurora Water. She has a Master’s degree in physics and a Bachelor’s in physics and mathematics.

Marjolijn Haasnoot is an senior environmental scientist specialized in water management, integrated assessment modelling and decision making under deep uncertainty. She is affiliated to Deltares and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. She developed the Dynamic Adaptive Policy Pathways approach and has since then applied and elaborated it in Europe, Asia and elsewhere in the world. Her current research focuses is on model-based adaptation pathways, fast integrated models, transient scenarios, adaptation signals for timely adaptation and using serious gaming as a tool to socialize those making decisions under conditions of uncertainty. http://www.tbm.tudelft.nl/over-faculteit/afdelingen/multi-actor-systems/people/researchers/dr-m-marjolijn-haasnoot/

Nidhi Kalra is a senior information scientist at the RAND Corporation, a codirector of RAND’s Center for Decision Making under Uncertainty, and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Her research addresses energy, environment, and science and technology policy. http://www.rand.org/about/people/k/kalra_nidhi.html

Oliver Schwabe is an IT Business Partner for Civil Aerospace at Rolls-Royce plc. and PhD researcher at Cranfield University. His research focuses on the forecasting of cost estimate uncertainty for innovative high value manufacturing products using spatial geometry
(topological data analysis) under conditions of deep uncertainty and lacking a priori information. https://de.linkedin.com/in/oliverschwabe

Rebecca Smith is a PhD researcher in the water resources systems analysis field at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She works with Front Range, Colorado, water managers to test emerging decision support tools and develop guidance for their practical application. She also seeks to enhance research agendas through sustained practitioner relationships.

Robert Lempert is a senior scientist at the RAND Corporation and director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for Longer Range Global Policy and the Future Human Condition. His research focuses on decisionmaking under conditions of deep uncertainty, with an emphasis on climate change, energy, and the environment. Lempert is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Panel on Assessing the Impact of Climate Change on Political and Social Stresses, and a lead author for Working Group II of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report and for the IPCC Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. Lempert was the Inaugural EADS Distinguished Visitor in Energy and Environment at the American Academy in Berlin. http://www.rand.org/about/people/l/lempert_robert_j.html

Sarah Jeong Sarah is interested in the effects of climate change on agriculture and food security, particularly in developing countries. She received her BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University with minors in Environmental studies and African studies. In her final year dissertation on the impacts of climate change on agriculture in Limpopo, South Africa received top marks from Drs Michael Oppenheimer and David Wilcove. She was raised in Seattle and is currently a policy analyst on the Natural Resources team at the New Zealand Treasury, where she assesses fiscal, economic and regulatory impacts of policies and is developing tools for measuring the costs and benefits of natural capital. She also worked as an intern on sustainable development projects in South Africa and spent a summer filming an anti-poaching documentary in Kenya.

Steven W. Popper is a senior economist at the RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. As associate director of the RAND Science and Technology Policy Institute (1996–2001), Popper provided research and analytic support to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and other agencies of the Executive Branch. http://www.rand.org/about/people/p/popper_steven_w.html

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