Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Provides a broad, yet practical, perspective on uncertainty and risk that can be used to improve decision-making abilities in a wide range of settings. Quantitative decision analysis provides a formal approach to accounting for uncertainty in resource and environmental management decision-making.

COURSE DETAILS:

Environmental decision-makers need to make explicit choices about regulating harmful activities, developing resources, and investing in restoration to meet biological, social and economic objectives across a broad range of stakeholder values. Decisions can be made via ad hoc approaches, usually in response to problems and conflicts as they arise, or by applying the formalism of structured decision-making that anticipates potential problems by explicitly considering objectives, alternative actions, uncertainties, and risks.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Upon completing Uncertainty, Risk, and Decision Analysis, students will have improved their thinking and decision-making skills in situations involving uncertainty and risk. Specific Learning Objectives in an environmental context include:

A) Uncertainty:
1. Identify and describe potential types and sources of uncertainty
2. Quantify uncertainty using Bayesian statistics

B) Risk:
3. Explain how uncertainty can create both risks and opportunities
4. Describe the four stages of risk analysis: perception, assessment, management, and communication
5. Explain the precautionary principle and the precautionary approach
6. Identify risk prone and risk averse behavioural types

C) Decision analysis:
7. Describe common decision traps
8. Construct simple quantitative decision analyses in MS Excel
9. Identify situations when taking uncertainty into account matters
10. Describe decision concepts including: mini-max/maxi-min decisions, value of information, Monte Carlo simulation, fragility/anti-fragility, and tail risks in environmental management

Grading

Materials

MATERIALS + SUPPLIES:

1. All students will require a laptop in classes and tutorials. The SFU library has free, 4-hr loans of laptops:

• https://www.lib.sfu.ca/borrow/borrowmaterials/laptops-equipment/borrow-laptop
• The campus-wide demand for library laptops is high and the library often runs out quickly. If you need to use the library laptops, you should show-up early at the library check-out desk.

2. MS Excel installed on laptop prior to the first class.

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: