DEIB SEMINAR | Integrated Modelling and Decision Support: addressing wicked water resource issues
Tony Jakeman
Australian National University
Politecnico di Milano – Campus Leonardo, Building 3, S 1.2 Room
June 24th, 2015
10.30 am
Contact:
Giorgio Guariso
Abstract
Modelling and simulation are becoming increasingly important for addressing today’s environmental problems. Many of these, such as assessing the impacts of climate change and the sustainability of groundwater systems, are messy or wicked problems. These are defined by there being multiple stakeholders and decision makers with competing and conflicting goals, and where the systems of interest are complex – being social, economic, and ecological – and are subject to a range of uncertainties caused by limited data, information and knowledge. Modellers can nevertheless play a key role in resolving and providing support for clarifying decision options for managing environmental issues. Indeed the more messy the problem the greater need for a proper process of ‘integrated assessment.’ In this process modellers undertake integration in several ways. They can help to frame the right problem, identify and include the key stakeholders, map out the system interactions, select the appropriate modelling paradigm(s) for analyzing consequences of policy changes and other influences, manage uncertainties and communicate them. This talk will illustrate the effectiveness of integrated assessment and decision support using our experiences in the water resources sector, provide some guidance on the process and lay out some of the challenges ahead.
Short Bio
Tony Jakeman is Professor, Fenner School of Environment and Society and Director of the Integrated Catchment Assessment and Management (iCAM) Centre, The Australian National University. He has been an Environmental Modeller with the ANU for over 35 years and has over 350 publications in the open literature, half of these in refereed international journals. Since 1997 he has also directed the iCAM Centre pursuing methods and applications of integrated assessment and decision support. He leads the Integration and Decision Support Program of the National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training. Other scientific and organisational activities include: Editor-in-Chief, Environmental Modelling and Software (Elsevier); Foundation President, IEMSS; Past President, MSSANZ, Inc.; Vice-President, International Association for Mathematics and Computers in Simulation; Board of Directors, The Integrated Assessment Society; and regularly a member of scientific advisory committees of international conferences. In 2011 he received the Silver Medal of Masaryk University for contributions to environmental modelling and software. In 2012 he was awarded the Ray Page Lifetime Achievement Award from Simulation Australia.
