DECISION RESOURCES AND CLEARINGHOUSE

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DECISION RESOURCES AND CLEARINGHOUSE

• Roberta Balstad
• Art Small
• Sabine Marx

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DECSION RESOURCES AND CLEARINGHOUSE

• Emphasis on decision tools in NSF DMUU
  competition
• CRED Proposal
• Climate-related and probability tutorials
• Envisioning tools
• Decision-schema tools
• Group process tools

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CRED IMPLEMENTATION OF TOOLS AND OUTREACH

• Electronic Clearinghouse
• CRED tools
• Tools from other NSF centers
• Links to existing on-line tools
• Specially produced tools
• CRED Deliverables

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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION TODAY

• Who will the users of the Clearinghouse be?
• What should be the initial focus of the
  Clearinghouse?
•  How do we define the extent of the
  Clearinghouse?
•  Any extant tools on group decision-making?
• e.g. integration of priorities, perspectives,
  distribution of resources, etc.
• Are we dealing with toolsor decision resources?
• Can we identify possible collaborators?

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NEXT

• Sabine Marx Discussion of approaches to the
  Tools/Decision Resources Clearinghouse
• Art Small Using Economic Models of
  Decision-Making to Structure Thinking About
  Decision Tools

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Architecture for Decision Resources and
Clearinghouse Website

• General notes
• search feature by sector, geographic region,
  etc.
• Introduction to Decision Resources What are
  tools, what do we intend to do?
• Bibliography/Reference List (decision research
  papers, etc.)

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Taxonomy/Category Structure for Tools

• By User Groups
• farmers/advisors
• life stock raisers/traders
• fishermen
• water resource mangers/engineers
• health professionals
• policy makers
• insurance managers
• energy managers
• general public
• researchers, etc.

• By Domain
• Agriculture
• Lifestock
• Fishery
• Water
• Health (human and animal)
• Insurance
• Energy
• General public
• Air Quality
• Ecosystems, etc.

• By Types of Decisions
• Economic
• Education/information gathering
• Group decision process
• Policy recommendation, etc.

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Two Kinds of Tools

• 1. Resources/Tools that provide information to
  make more well-informed decision external to the
  decision maker
• 2. Resources/Tools that will improve group
  decision processes internal to the decision
  maker/group

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Two Kinds of Tools

• 1. Resources/Tools that provide information to
  make more well-informed decision external to the
  decision maker
• 2. Resources/Tools that will improve group
  decision processes internal to the decision
  maker/group

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• Data Analysis and Presentation/Observations and
  Data
• Geographical Imaging Tools (e.g., CIESIN,
  HealthMapper)
• Risk mapping (e.g. RVF)
• Hotspots (e.g. EI)
• Calculators (CO2 calculator, Human Footprint)
• Common Sense Climate Index
• Articulation of Options/Actions
• ???
• Forecasting/Prediction
• seasonal-to-interannual climate forecasts (e.g.
  IRI, ClimLab)
• climate change forecasts (e.g., MAGICC Model
  for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced
  Climate Change, UK)

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• Monitoring
• Rainfall data (e.g., 10-day precipitation
  estimates tool)
• Risk Assessment
• What are the implications of choosing various
  actions?
• (e.g., Environmental Impact Assessment)

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In each category

• There is a need for educational tools/tutorials
  relevant to each respective subject
• To enhance understanding of
• Terminology/scientific jargon
• Probability
• Reading of maps and data
• Etc.

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2 Kinds of Tools

• 1. Resources/Tools that provide information to
  make more well-informed decision external to the
  decision maker
• 2. Resources/Tools that will improve group
  decision processes internal to the decision
  maker/group

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• Individual and Group Decisions
• What kind of decision maker am I?
• Intrinsic Personality scales, risk perception,
  etc.
• Context-dependent
• Group characteristics
• Adoption of group goals?
• What happens to individual goals?
• Notion of trusteeship and other roles
• Cueing/signals
• Group culture
• History/seniority
• Leadership
• Dependence
• Multiple equilibria
• Random shocks

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Select Examples
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• Assembly of a set of environmental layers that
  ultimately will enable us to identify the
  geographic areas where RVF is enzootic with
  epizootic potential.  
• Shows a first attempt to identify those areas for
  Kenya, with observed RVF cases superimposed.
• Can be applied to the entire Horn of Africa and
  Middle East.
• The complete model will ultimately involve
  several other steps that are at least as complex
  as this one, namely,
• identifying threshold values of
• rainfall, soil moisture, vegetation greeness and
  inundation associated with historical outbreaks
• assessing our ability to predict exceedance of
  these thresholds at different lead times using
  global climate models

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Hotspots
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Human Footprint
Nine global data layers were used to create this
global "human footprint" map. The layers covering
the following themes human population pressure,
human land use and infrastructure and human
access.
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Example of Map showing 10-day Rainfall Estimates
for Southern Africa
Source IRI
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Potential Impacts of Climate Change on World Food
Supply

• The Agricultural Scenarios
• Future agricultural scenarios present a
  combination of the climate change, crop response
  scenarios (i.e., physiological response to
  elevated CO2 ), and farmers' adaptive responses.
  Thus, the crop simulations are based on some
  combination of the following assumptions
• Climate change scenarios 8 to choose from 
  CO2 effects on crop growth either with or
  without Adaptation none, level 1 and level 2
  
• http//sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/giss_crop_study/C
  CMscenarios.html

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DSSAT Decision Support System for
Agrotechnology Transfer

• DSSAT (pronounced DEEsat)
• microcomputer software program combining
• - crop soil and weather databases and programs
  to manage them
• - with crop models and application programs
• - to simulate multi-year outcomes of crop
  management strategies.
• http//www.icasa.net/dssat/index.html

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PODIUM Policy Dialogue Model

• PODIUM runs on a personal computer
• Policy makers and planners can learn to use it in
  minutes, to explore vital questions such as
• Can we feed ourselves in 2025?
• Do we have enough water to irrigate the crops
  needed to ensure future national food supply
  and/or food security?
• The model maps the complex relationships between
  the numerous factors that affect water and food
  security
• Users can revise this data and change any of the
  variables used by the model
• http//www.iwmi.cgiar.org/tools/podium.htm

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• Reminder
• For most part, these are examples for tools that
  we can include into our clearinghouse
• These are not necessarily the tools we want to
  develop ourselves at CRED.
• Rather, we want to find out
• How are these tools used?
• Can we add a group decision component to them?
• How else can our work complement these tools?

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Group Decision Process Tool

• E.g., Decision Management in Companies (Yates)
• Need (whether a decision should be made)
• Mode (who and how?)
• Investment (resources, staff time, etc.)
• Options (potential responses to problem)
• Possibilities (result of particular course of
  action)
• Judgment (accuracy of projections)
• Value
• Tradeoffs
• Acceptability
• Implementation