Jordan Fischbach, former RAND summer associate Nastaran Tebyanian, Rob Lempert, Steven Popper, Edmundo Molina Perez, Pedro Nascimento de Lima, Nihar Chhatiawala, and James Syme attended in person.
Photo courtesy Rob Lempert
December 1, 2023
Pardee RAND was well-represented at the tenth annual meeting of the Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) in Delft, Netherlands, October 30–November 1.
Attending the event in person were Pardee RAND students Nihar Chhatiawala (cohort '20) and James Syme ('18); alumni Jordan Fischbach ('04), Pedro Nascimento de Lima ('19), and Edmundo Molina Pérez ('11); professors Robert Lempert and Steven Popper; and former RAND summer associate Nastaran Tebyanian. Chhatiawala received support from Pardee RAND Career Services to attend the conference. Alumni Tim McDonald ('16) and Sara Turner ('15) both attended virtually.
Together, the Pardee RAND contingent was involved in various aspects of the conference, including organizing and participating in panels, reviewing abstracts, and serving as DMDU Society leadership: Popper is the DMDU Society's finance chair and Nascimento de Lima its membership chair, while Lempert and professor Michelle Miro were members of the event's organizing committee. RAND hosted the 2014 and 2018 meetings.
Fischbach presented "DMDU Thinking in Practice: Lessons Learned From a Decade of Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Planning Process" on the panel DMDU Practice.
Lempert and Popper both participated in a panel that asked, Can We Predict Long-Term Policy Decisions? They also participated in other panels individually.
Lempert was on three other panels: Applying DMDU Techniques to Global Systemic Risk Assessment and Exploring the Institutional Contexts for Effective DMDU, and Policy Relevant Uncertainty Analysis in Energy System Modeling: An Expert Panel Debate. Popper was on two: DMDU and the Humanities and Stumbling Blocks and Stepping Stones: Practical Challenges and Opportunities of Using DMDU Methods in the Transport Sector.
McDonald presented "Leveraging DMDU Tools for Redesigning and Transforming Complex Social Systems" on the panel Climate Resilient Development Pathways.
Molina Pérez presented "Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty and Neuroscience: An Experimental Approach" on the panel Emerging Fields in DMDU.
Nascimento de Lima presented "Robust Decision Making in Health Policy: Applications to COVID-19 and Colorectal Cancer" on the panel DMDU in Health Applications and led the DMDU Regional and Interest Groups Workshop.
On the panel DMDU and Energy (Transition), Syme presented "Using Exploratory Modeling and Scenario Discovery Methods to Identify Drivers of Decarbonization Vulnerability Across Nations" and Turner presented "Robust Policies for Unconventional Oil and Gas Development in Argentina in a Decarbonizing World." Turner also shared a poster, "Poverty and land use transitions in Latin America and the Caribbean," and Syme presented the software package Simulating Sectoral Pathways and Uncertainty Exploration for Decarbonization (SISEPUEDE) at the Tools and Software Market.
This year’s meeting drew participants from around the world. Its keynote speakers included Debra Roberts from South Africa, one of the co-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Sixth Assessment Report; Peter Glas, who leads the Dutch Delta Programme, an agency that uses DMDU to manage the country’s flood defenses; and UC San Diego political scientist David Victor, who researches the design of government institutions well-suited to managing deep uncertainty.
"The DMDU meeting was such a joy to attend!" Nascimento de Lima said, adding, "It’s so nice to see DMDU methods pioneered by fellow RANDites being used and having an impact around the world and being part of the community that is using those methods to inform society’s most deeply uncertain policy decisions.”
The Society for Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) is a multidisciplinary association of practicing professionals, scholars, and students working to improve processes, methods, and tools for decisionmaking under deep uncertainty, facilitate their use in practice, and foster effective and responsible decision making in our rapidly changing world. Robust decisionmaking and other DMDU methods were originally developed at RAND, which played a key role in launching the DMDU Society a decade ago. It has now grown to thousands of members worldwide.
