Why Environmental Planning is so Difficult, and What to Do About it

Knowledged-based decisions are made by engineers, scientists, economists, physicians and others. Indeed, people use reasoned thought to make decisions in all areas. Organizations and animals also make decisions in ways which can be described by rational models. One central challenge in decision making is the severe uncertainty|deci ent knowledge and imperfect understanding|which arises in many areas. In this talk we will use info-gap decision theory to explore the implications of severe uncertainty. Discussing examples from many disciplines, with emphasis on environmental engineering, we study the ideas of optimizing, satiscing and robustness.