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Sustainable Water and Environmental Management in the California Bay-Delta (2012) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix F: Methods to Support Decision Making
Pages 237-248

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From page 237...
... Instead of developing a single and potentially contested probabilistic forecast and associated optimal solution, RDM evaluates candidate solutions against large ensembles of possible outcomes to illuminate critical vulnerabilities and suggest approaches for increasing the strategies' robustness. RDM has been applied to problems related to climate change mitigation or adaptation in a variety of different contexts, including global sustainability (Lempert et al.
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From page 238...
... . It has been a useful framework for developing robust climate adaptation strategies for water agencies.
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From page 239...
... Indeed, Lorie (2010) defined CMDS as "integrating collaborative modeling with participatory processes to inform natural resource management decisions." CMDS is an approach to reach consensus and make decisions about complex systems that combines technical skills required to understand the systems scientifically and stakeholder involvement (Cockerill et al.
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From page 240...
... Often, system dynamics (SD) modeling techniques are applied to conduct collaborative modeling studies because they allow participants to examine complex physical systems that involve social and economic factors involved (Cockerill et al.
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From page 241...
... . In this case, a group of regulators, consultants, and representatives of water agencies and environmental groups explored the water-supply implications of different-size EWAs using the water resources system model CALSIM (Brown et al.
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From page 242...
... This allowed the Restudy team to solicit comments from a broad base of the public and permitted people to participate as team decisions were being made. The collaborative modeling effort continues today through a newly created Interagency Modeling Center (IMC)
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From page 243...
... As a result, decision analysis provides an analytic framework that can be exploited to link bottom-up climate vulnerability analysis with the generation of climate change projections. The process is entitled "decision scaling." The key tenet of the approach is that the appropriate orientation for adaptation planning is one of acceptance of large uncertainties and planning for a wide variety of possible futures.
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From page 244...
... After these are established, hydrologists and climate scientists estimate the plausibility of the water conditions that exceed the coping thresholds, taking into account not only climate change but also natural climate variability and stochastic variability observed with a stationary climate assumption. While the existing applications of decision scaling focus on uncertainties associated with climate change, the approach could be adjusted to consider other uncertainties that are key in the bay delta including consumption patterns and environmental factors.
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From page 245...
... As Kuhn (1970/1996) observed, "Sometimes the convincing force is just time itself and the human toll it takes," or as Kuhn quoted Max Planck, "a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." One purpose of joint fact-finding is to speed this process and make its outcomes relevant to decisions that will be made soon.
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From page 246...
... Journal of the American Water Resources Association 47:524-534. Brown, L., W
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From page 247...
... 2008. The Shared Vision Planning Primer: How to Incorporate Computer Aided Dispute Resolution in Water Resources Planning.
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From page 248...
... Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management 138 (2)
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Key Terms

  • water resources
  • water management
  • consensus building
  • resources planning
  • decision scaling

  • climate information
  • decision support
  • water agencies
  • key uncertainties
  • scientific dialogue

  • change projections
  • florida water
  • water resource
  • managing freshwater
  • restudy team

  • delta stewardship
  • public trust
  • performance metrics
  • stakeholder involvement
  • delta science

  • stewardship council
  • van den
  • south florida
  • dispute resolution
  • science process

  • simulation models
  • integrating collaborative
  • aided dispute
  • decision analysis
  • alternative plans


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