330
• What alternative technologies and processes could do better?
• What are the economic costs and prices of inputs and outputs? Shadow prices?
• What environmental values are considered? Whose environmental values are
considered?
• What is the impact on human health, in both the near and long term?
• How are cultural/social values and impacts identified and incorporated?
• How are diverse inputs and outputs weighted and/or balanced?
• Is there transparency and equity in making these decisions?
• Are the human outcomes of the decisions just? According to whom?
• What human interests benefit and what human interests are harmed?
• How can the harmed express disagreement or receive compensation?
• How well does the soft-infrastructure (governance) process weigh these
considerations?
• How does the governance process need to be changed to better weigh these
considerations?
There are several types of questions we can ask in FEW systems. An incomplete
list includes Descriptive, Correlative, Causality, Efficacy, and Management questions. Each of these questions can be addressed using metrics, data, computing, and
models. Example physical-science-based questions are as follows:
• Descriptive questions: production levels, emissions, inputs and outputs, impacts.
• Correlation/Relational questions: relative importance of energy sources, levels
of food, energy, and water insecurity in different communities, the relationship
between income/education levels/ethnicity and food, energy, and water insecurity, health impact assessments (e.g., epidemiology).
• Causality questions: what is the causal relationship between access to treated
water and disease? What is the effect of efficiency policies on energy use? What
is the effect of food assistance programs (e.g., the Supplemental Nutritional
Assistance Program, or SNAP) on food security?
• Adaptive management questions: what changes in management might optimize desired outcomes?
12.2.3 Decision Science and Questions at Scale
Decision science also depends on questions of scale, both geographic and temporal. For
example, at what scale is a question framed for research and examination? For example,
trying to address flooding impacts for one small community may be futile if the entire
watershed is subject to flooding. Alternatively, an examination of the US Renewable
Fuel Standard (RFS) alone would miss the global implications of this policy. Temporal
scales also matter. As noted in Sect. 4.3, decision-makers may also be responding to
whether an event is a “press” event that occurs gradually and over time or a “pulse” event
that happens quickly. The catastrophic wild fires that occurred in California in both 2017
and 2018 are examples of pulse events but also signify a perhaps longer-term shift in
regional dynamics through changes over time in press events.
M. Carbajales-Dale et al.
• What alternative technologies and processes could do better?
• What are the economic costs and prices of inputs and outputs? Shadow prices?
• What environmental values are considered? Whose environmental values are
considered?
• What is the impact on human health, in both the near and long term?
• How are cultural/social values and impacts identified and incorporated?
• How are diverse inputs and outputs weighted and/or balanced?
• Is there transparency and equity in making these decisions?
• Are the human outcomes of the decisions just? According to whom?
• What human interests benefit and what human interests are harmed?
• How can the harmed express disagreement or receive compensation?
• How well does the soft-infrastructure (governance) process weigh these
considerations?
• How does the governance process need to be changed to better weigh these
considerations?
There are several types of questions we can ask in FEW systems. An incomplete
list includes Descriptive, Correlative, Causality, Efficacy, and Management questions. Each of these questions can be addressed using metrics, data, computing, and
models. Example physical-science-based questions are as follows:
• Descriptive questions: production levels, emissions, inputs and outputs, impacts.
• Correlation/Relational questions: relative importance of energy sources, levels
of food, energy, and water insecurity in different communities, the relationship
between income/education levels/ethnicity and food, energy, and water insecurity, health impact assessments (e.g., epidemiology).
• Causality questions: what is the causal relationship between access to treated
water and disease? What is the effect of efficiency policies on energy use? What
is the effect of food assistance programs (e.g., the Supplemental Nutritional
Assistance Program, or SNAP) on food security?
• Adaptive management questions: what changes in management might optimize desired outcomes?
12.2.3 Decision Science and Questions at Scale
Decision science also depends on questions of scale, both geographic and temporal. For
example, at what scale is a question framed for research and examination? For example,
trying to address flooding impacts for one small community may be futile if the entire
watershed is subject to flooding. Alternatively, an examination of the US Renewable
Fuel Standard (RFS) alone would miss the global implications of this policy. Temporal
scales also matter. As noted in Sect. 4.3, decision-makers may also be responding to
whether an event is a “press” event that occurs gradually and over time or a “pulse” event
that happens quickly. The catastrophic wild fires that occurred in California in both 2017
and 2018 are examples of pulse events but also signify a perhaps longer-term shift in
regional dynamics through changes over time in press events.
M. Carbajales-Dale et al.