Abstract
Scientific and technological uncertainty is common to most quantitative assessment and policy analysis that involves problems in technology and public policy. In my three lectures at the NATO Advanced Studies Institute and in this summary paper, my primary concern is with the questions of how, and to what extent, one should characterize and deal with such uncertainty. Of course, these questions are normative in nature and their resolution requires some elaboration of the objectives that are to be served by quantitative policy analysis. In other writings, I have detailed a variety of substance-focused, process-focused, and analyst-focused motivations that can, in varying situations, underlie the commissioning, execution, and use of quantitative assessment and policy analysis (1.2). The interesting feature of these motivations is that despite their diversity it is possible to extract from them a single set of desiderata to characterize “good” risk assessment and other quantitative policy analysis. These are shown in Exhibit 1. Of course, people operating with different motivations are likely to have somewhat different views about the relative importance that should be attached to these different desiderata (2).
Work discussed in this paper has been supported by a variety of sources including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Carnegie-Mellon University. I am pleased to acknowledge the assistance of M. Henrion, S. Morris, I. Nair, D. Amaral, W. Rish, E. Morgan, P. Steranchak and others.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
M. Granger Morgan, “Uncertainty and Quantitative Assessment in Risk Management,” paper prepared for the American Chemical Society Symposium on Assessment Health Risks from Chemicals, Kansas City, USA, September 15–16, 1983.
M. Granger Morgan, “The role of decision analysis and other quantitative tools in environmental policy analysis,” Tutorial Paper Prepared for the Chemicals Division of the Environment Directorate, OECD, Paris, January 1983.
Most of the discussions of this section quote directly from an earlier discussion provided in reference 2 above.
Baruch Fischhoff, “Clinical Decision Analysis,” Operations Research, 28, pp. 28–43, January/February 1980.
Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic and Amos Tversky, (eds.), Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases, Cambridge University Press, 1982.
See, for example, M. Granger Morgan, Max Henrion, and Samuel C. Morris, “Expert judgments for policy analysis,” Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, NY, 11973, USA, BNL 51353, 1981
Carl-Axel S. Stael von Holstein and James E. Matheson, A Manual for Encoding Probability Distributions, SRI International, Menlo Park, CA, USA, August. 1979
Dean W. Boyd and Stephen G. Gegulinski, Characterizing Uncertainty in Technology Cost and Performance, Decision Focus, Inc. (report 1114 ), Palo Alto, CA, USA, June 1979.
M. Granger Morgan, Samuel C. Morris, Max Henrion. Deborah A.L. Amaral, and William R. Rish, “Technical uncertainty in quantitative policy analysis: A sulfur air pollution example,” preprint. Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA, April 1983.
M. Granger Morgan, Deborah Amaral, Max Henrion and Samuel Morris, “Technological uncertainty in policy analysis,” final report to the NSF Division of Policy Research and Analysis on grant PRA-7913070, Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, August 1983 (available through NTIS).
Max Henrion and M. Granger Morgan, “A Computer Aid for Risk and Other Policy Analysis,” Risk Analysis, (in press).
Max Henrion and Indira Nair, “Demos User’s Manual,” Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15213, USA, November 1982.
A more recent and more detailed discussion of many of the subjects discussed in this paper can be found in M. Granger Morgan, Max Henrion, Indira Nair, Theresa Mullin, and Charlie Wiecha, “A generic ‘pre-HEED’ on characterizing and dealing with uncertainty in health and environmental risk assessment,” prepared for the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Health and Environmental Research, under contract DE-AC02-83ER60138, NTIS, Washington, D.C., USA, 1983.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1985 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Morgan, M.G. (1985). Scientific and Technological Uncertainty in Quantitative Assessment and Policy Analysis. In: Covello, V.T., Mumpower, J.L., Stallen, P.J.M., Uppuluri, V.R.R. (eds) Environmental Impact Assessment, Technology Assessment, and Risk Analysis. NATO ASI Series, vol 4. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70634-9_24
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70634-9_24
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-70636-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-70634-9
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive