Planning for an Uncertain Future
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The problem: We live in a time of unprecedented uncertainty, especially when it comes to infrastructure planning. Policymakers must make crucial investments today, even as they grapple with incomplete information on how environmental, economic, and social changes will affect future infrastructure needs.
Smarter investments: RAND brings a wealth of knowledge in Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU), helping local, state, and federal leaders identify low-regret investments that can provide value—regardless of how conditions evolve. Partners collaborate with us to create smart, forward-thinking infrastructure strategies that prepare communities for whatever the future may hold.
RAND helps governments and communities navigate uncertainty:
- Water availability: RAND applied Robust Decision Making to water management planning challenges facing the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District. This project also investigated the performance of a machine learning-based simulation of two local groundwater basins, which suggested that demand management could significantly reduce vulnerabilities to drought and other climate changes. The DMDU paradigm can also be applied to Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations to improve water management strategies and reservoir decisionmaking.
- Electricity systems: The DMDU paradigm helps decisionmakers systematically understand technological solutions to the decarbonization of electricity systems, as well as a range of risks to which mitigation plans are vulnerable and how best to reduce those vulnerabilities.
- Transportation: DMDU and Robust Decision Making may help transportation planners more accurately forecast future demands amid fast-paced changes in travel modes. RAND also worked with industry experts to envision how airports will need to adapt their airspaces to accommodate new aviation technologies, such as uncrewed aircraft.