Decision support experiments and evaluations using seasonal to ...

The U.S. Climate Change Science Program
There is a need to
incorporate public
concerns and develop
communication
outreach methods,
particularly about
risk, that are clear
and coherent.
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users to exchange information, promote communication,
propose remedies to problems,
foster frequent engagement, and jointly develop
decision-support systems to address user needs.
In the process, they provide incentives for innovation—frequently
noted in the literature—that
facilitate the use of climate science information
in decisions (e.g., NRC, 2007; Cash and Buizer,
2005; Sarewitz and Pielke, 2007). Before outlining
how these seven experiments illuminate
boundary spanning, it is important to consider
problems identified in recent research.
While there is widespread agreement that decision
support involves translating the products
of climate science into forms useful for decision
makers and disseminating the translated
products, there is disagreement over precisely
what constitutes translation (NRC, 2008). One
view is that climate scientists know which
products will be useful to decision makers and
that potential users will make appropriate use
of decision-relevant information once it is made
available. Adherents of this view typically emphasize
the importance of developing “decisionsupport
tools”, such as models, maps, and other
technical products intended to be relevant to
certain classes of decisions that, when created,
complete the task of decision support. This approach,
also called a “translation model”, (NRC,
2008) has not proved useful to many decision
makers—underscored by the fact that, in our
seven cases, greater weight was given to “creating
conditions that foster the appropriate use
of information” rather than to the information
itself (NRC, 2008).
A second view is that decision-support activities
should enable climate information producers
and users to jointly develop information that addresses
users’ needs—also called “co-production”
of information or reconciling information
“supply and demand” (NRC, 1989, 1996, 1999,
2006; McNie, 2007; Sarewitz and Pielke, 2007;
Lemos and Morehouse, 2005). Our seven cases
clearly delineate the presumed advantages of
the second view.
In the SFWMD case, an increase in user trust
was a powerful inducement to introduce, and
then continue, experiments leading to development
of a Water Supply and Environment schedule,
employing seasonal and multi-seasonal
climate outlooks as guidance for regulatory
releases. As this tool began to help reduce operating
system uncertainty, decision-maker confidence
in the use of model outputs increased, as
did further cooperation between scientists and
users—facilitated by SFWMD’s communication
and agency partnership networks.
In the case of INFORM, participating agencies
in California worked in partnership with
scientists to design experiments that would
allow the state to integrate forecast methods
into planning for uncertainties in reservoir
regulation. Not only did this set of experiments
demonstrate the practical value of such tools,
but they built support for adaptive measures to
manage risks, and reinforced the use, by decision
makers, of tool output in their decisions.
Similar to the SFWMD case, through demonstrating
how forecast models could reduce
operating uncertainties—especially as regards
increasing reliability and lead time for crucial
decisions—cooperation among partners seems
to have been strengthened.
Because the New York City and Seattle cases
both demonstrate use of decision-support
information in urban settings, they amplify
another set of boundary-spanning factors: the
need to incorporate public concerns and develop
communication outreach methods, particularly
about risk, that are clear and coherent. While
conscientious efforts to support stakeholder
needs for reducing uncertainties associated with
sea-level rise and infrastructure relocation are
being made, the New York case highlights the
need for further efforts to refine communication,
tool dissemination, and evaluation efforts
to deliver information on potential impacts of
climate change more effectively. It also illustrates
the need to incorporate new risk-based
analysis into existing decision structures related
to infrastructure construction and maintenance.
The Seattle public utility has had success in
conveying the importance of employing SI climate
forecasts in operations, and is considered
a national model for doing so, in part because
of a higher degree of established public support
due to: (1) litigation over protection of
endangered fish populations and (2) a greater
in-house ability to test forecast skill and evaluate
decision tools. Both served as incentives
for collaboration. Access to highly-skilled
Chapter 4