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Robustness is a key criterion for evaluating alternative decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty. However, no systematic, general approach exists for finding robust strategies using the broad range of models and data often available to decision makers. This study demonstrates robust decision making (RDM), an analytic method that helps design robust strategies through an iterative process that first suggests candidate robust strategies, identifies clusters of future states of the world to which they are vulnerable, and then evaluates the trade-offs in hedging against these vulnerabilities. This approach can help decision makers design robust strategies while also systematically generating clusters of key futures interpretable as narrative scenarios. Our study demonstrates the approach by identifying robust, adaptive, near-term pollution-control strategies to help ensure economic growth and environmental quality throughout the 21st century.

RAND researchers supported a high-level Israeli government team tasked with improving long-term socioeconomic strategy for the state. This report highlights selected inputs made to the government team to summarize the essential mechanics and roles for bringing a strategic perspective to policy consideration. To show how one can use a strategic perspective in an analysis of policy choices, the report uses the example of an aging population.

A sophisticated reader ought to view with great skepticism the prospect of answering questions about the long-term future. The checkered history of predicting the future-from the famous declarations that humans would never fly to the Limits to Growth study to claims about the \"New Economy\"-has dissuaded policymakers from considering the effects of their decisions more than a few months or years ahead. However, today's choices will significantly influence the course of the twenty-first century. New analytic methods, enabled by modern computers, may transform our ability to reason systematically about the long term. This report reviews traditional methods of grappling with the morrow, from narratives to scenario analysis, which fail to address the multiplicity of plausible long-term futures. The authors demonstrate a quantitative approach to long-term policy analysis (LTPA). Robust decision methods enable decisionmakers to examine a vast range of plausible futures and design near-term, often adaptive, strategies to be robust across them. Reframing the question \"What will the long-term future bring?\" as \"How can we choose actions today that will be consistent with our long-term interests?\" these methods provide powerful analytic support to humans' innate capacity for \"what-if-ing.\" Choosing the challenge of sustainable development as an example, the authors discuss how these methods may be applied to real-world LTPA and a wide range of other challenges of decisionmaking under conditions of deep uncertainty.

This book discusses the opportunities and risks the government of Israel faces in shifting to a greater reliance on domestic and imported natural gas. By applying newly developed methods for strategic planning and decisionmaking under deep uncertainty, the analysis seeks to help the Israeli government engage in managed change by choosing robust strategies that minimize potential consequences of relying more heavily on natural gas.

Israel has changed dramatically in the past two decades. The Israel Police is transforming itself to meet the needs of modern Israel. The Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Finance, and the Israel Police asked RAND to conduct a study to address issues of public perceptions and trust in the police, benchmarking the police against other police organizations, performance measurement, and deterrence and crime prevention.

The Brain Korea 21 Program (BK21), which seeks to make Korean research universities globally competitive and to produce more high-quality researchers in Korea, provides funding to graduate students and professors who belong to research groups at top universities. The authors develop quantitative and qualitative models to evaluate how well BK21 is fulfilling its goals and make suggestions for further stimulating Korean university research.

In 2003, the National Commission on the Public Service, chaired by Paul Volcker, issued a report detailing problems within the federal government today and recommending changes in its organization, leadership, and operations. This book suggests practical ways to implement the recommendations and defines a research agenda for the future. Thirteen essays address the primary problem areas identified by the Volcker Commission, and the commission report itself is included.

Robustness is a key criterion for evaluating alternative decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty. However, no systematic, general approach exists for finding robust strategies using the broad range of models and data often available to decision makers. This study demonstrates robust decision making (RDM), an analytic method that helps design robust strategies through an iterative process that first suggests candidate robust strategies, identifies clusters of future states of the world to which they are vulnerable, and then evaluates the trade-offs in hedging against these vulnerabilities. This approach can help decision makers design robust strategies while also systematically generating clusters of key futures interpretable as narrative scenarios. Our study demonstrates the approach by identifying robust, adaptive, near-term pollution-control strategies to help ensure economic growth and environmental quality throughout the 21st century.

The United States government has not sponsored technology foresight as it has been defined and practised by governments in Europe, Japan and elsewhere in the world. [Foresight has been described in many places, but the original concept, as far as the authors are aware, was proposed by Martin and Irvine (1989).] [Different approaches to identifying important technologies is summarized in Wagner (1997).] Instead, the US government sponsored a parallel effort called ‘critical technologies identification’ between 1989 and 1999. This paper describes the critical technologies movement in the United States and explores why critical technologies identification was limited in its ability to capture the attention of US government officials and other decision‐makers. The authors suggest possible alternative futures for foresight in the United States. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Robustness is a key criterion for evaluating alternative decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty. However, no systematic, general approach exists for finding robust strategies using the broad range of models and data often available to decision makers. This study demonstrates robust decision making (RDM), an analytic method that helps design robust strategies through an iterative process that first suggests candidate robust strategies, identifies clusters of future states of the world to which they are vulnerable, and then evaluates the trade-offs in hedging against these vulnerabilities. This approach can help decision makers design robust strategies while also systematically generating clusters of key futures interpretable as narrative scenarios. Our study demonstrates the approach by identifying robust, adaptive, near-term pollution-control strategies to help ensure economic growth and environmental quality throughout the 21st century.