Perspectives on Uncertainty and Risk

The decisions of modern life are complex, giving rise to often intractable uncertainty in decision making. This uncertainty can take several forms. Different perspectives lead people to perceive and seek to manage the world in different ways. The approach proposed in this thesis enhances awareness of this pluralism and helps Integrated Assessment practitioners to consider the possibilities and consequences of various equally legitimate possible development pathways and, hence, avoid being over deterministic and positivistic in their practice.

Integrated Assessment (IA) has been a rapidly evolving field during the last decade. This does not imply that Integrated Assessment is something new. In an earlier publication², we argued that the Egyptian farmers in pre-Christian times were already performing integrated assessments. For decades, scientists have been working with decision-makers to address local and regional problems, especially in the field of environmental policy, though it was not necessarily called “Integrated Assessment”. It is only recently that Integrated Assessment has been recognised as a profession in its own right and as a specific branch of scientific research. The current state can be considered as the culmination of a multi-decade process that involved both the changing nature of the issues on the societal agenda as well as the evolution of the ways these issues have been analysed by scientists and managed by decision-makers³.

Much has been said and written about what the public expects from science: resolving, or at least reducing, uncertainty. Scientists are requested to give definite answers to societal questions. There are simple and one-dimensional questions that can be unambiguously answered by science, such as effects of smoking on lung functions. However, the majority of urgent societal questions pertain to complex issues, such as increasing poverty, climate change and European integration. Such complex issues involve inherent uncertainty. Scientists are, for example, unable to give confident answers about the magnitude of global climate change or even whether a region will warm or cool. Uncertainty thus has major political and ethical impacts, as the need to decide whether or not to act, as well as what kind of action to take, requires deciding about uncertainty².

Risk refers to debates about the possibility that something might go wrong. Risks are rooted in human behaviour¹, or in natural surprises or extreme events (also referred to as external risks). The notion of ‘risk’ traces back to the 13^th century². The word ‘risk’ is derived from the Italian word ‘rischiare’ that has its origins in the Greek notion ‘rhiza’ which literally means ‘root’ or ‘cliff’. This word got the metaphorical meaning of everything that sticks out, and thereby can constitute a danger. The word risk circulated in Italy in the context of insurance against the loss of shiploads coming from the Orient through, for example, storms or piracy. The notion of ‘risk’ is still used in the context of insurance, but apart from that it has become a widely applied, often used and ambiguous notion. It is used in the field of business, technology, health, politics, sport, games, and even in love. ‘Risk’ originally had a negative connotation, as something dreadful (for example, in the case of nuclear energy). It is now also used positively, namely as a challenge (for example, in the case of stock exchange) or even as a kick that one is seeking (for example, bungy-jumping)³.

So far, we have discussed the concepts ‘uncertainty’ and ‘risk’ as independent instances. However, the two concepts are related. In this Chapter, we will argue that uncertainty and risk are two sides of the same coin, i.e. the limited predictability of complex issues. Furthermore, as can be concluded from the previous Chapters, the key challenges uncertainty management and risk analysis face are comparable. Instead of considering uncertainty and risk as two separate concepts and viewing uncertainty management and risk analysis as two different branches, we think it is interesting to explore how the two concepts and the two methodologies can be used in a complementary manner in decision-support on complex issues. Our aim is thus to develop a framework for integrated uncertainty management and risk analysis.

In line with the theoretical criteria and conditions discussed in the previous part of this thesis, a general framework for pluralistic integrated uncertainty management and risk analysis is proposed in this Chapter. The various steps will be discussed as concrete as possible. In the next part of the thesis, it will be explored in practice by means of the case of an example of an actual assessment process (Chapters 6–8). The aim is that by means of this testing, the theoretical outline can be developed into a more practically feasible framework (Chapter 9).

The primary aim of this thesis is to propose a new approach to decision-support that is practically feasible as well as theoretically sound. We therefore want to explore in a real-life context whether the prima framework, outlined and theoretically underpinned in the previous part of this thesis, has something to offer to the practise of Integrated Assessment. The aim of this practical test is twofold. First, we want to evaluate whether there is a potential need for a new or complementary approach to uncertainty management amongst practitioners. To that end, it is proposed to perform a retrospective case study involving previous decision-support on complex issues. Second, we want to explore the potential added value of the proposed approach compared to present assessment strategies for decision-support. Therefore, the retrospective analysis will be followed by a prospective study that enables to explore the practical feasibility of the prima-approach in a real life context. To do so, it is necessary to setup a mutual learning process, in which we, together with the analysts, explore whether and how the prima-approach is applicable in actual decision-support on complex issues.

As outlined in the previous Chapter, a multiple-case case-study on rivm’s Environmental Outlooks has been performed in order to address the research question whether there is a (potential) practical need for an alternative or complementary approach to uncertainty management. This Chapter reports the case-study research and the conclusions that can be deduced from this empirical research. The first part of the Chapter will focus on the document analyses, while in the second part the state-of-the-art in rivm’s uncertainty management is outlined, which description mainly builds on the interviews, the focus group and the questionnaires.

The retrospective study on rivm’s series of Environmental Outlooks as discussed in the previous Chapters indicated a potential need for a systematic framework for uncertainty management. One of the ambitions of this thesis is to test whether the proposed prima approach can satisfy this need, not only theoretically, but also in practical terms. In the first part of this thesis we argued that from a theoretical, philosophical point of view applying the prima approach would improve the quality of Integrated Assessment endeavours. In the current Chapter, we will explore whether and how this potential improvement can be realised in practise. The key question addressed in this Chapter thus holds: Is it possible and if so in what way, to use the prima approach in assessment practice in a practically feasible manner as to improve the quality of the assessment?

Society is more and more confronted with complex issues. Decision-makers are ever more struggling with complexity. As argued in this thesis the features of today’s complexity are that: