Aim and scope
Following the success of the
CwU'2004
the main aim of the workshop is to provide researchers and practitioners
from different areas with an interdisciplinary forum for discussing various
ways of dealing with uncertainties in various areas, including Environmental
and Social Sciences, Economics, Policy-Making, Management, and Engineering.
Presentations shall be prepared for an interdisciplinary audience, and
shall address: open problems, limitations of known approaches,
novel methods and techniques, or lessons from applications of various
approaches.
Ongoing global changes give rise to fundamentally new scientific problems
which require new concepts and tools. A key issue concerns a vast variety of
practically irreducible uncertainties, which challenge our traditional
models and require new concepts and analytical tools.
This uncertainty critically dominates, e.g., the climate change debates.
In short, the dilemma is concerned with enormous costs vs massive
uncertainties of potentially extreme impacts.
The focus of CwU'2007 is on novel approaches to supporting robust
decision-making and design, especially when uncertainty is irreducible,
consequences might be enormous, and the decision process involves
stakeholders with diverse interests.
Traditional scientific approaches usually rely on real observations
and experiments.
Yet no sufficient observations exist for new problems, and "pure" experiments,
and learning by doing may be very expensive, dangerous, or simply impossible.
In addition, available historical observations are often contaminated
by "experimentator", i.e., our actions, and policies.
The complexity of new problems does not allow us to achieve enough certainty
just by increasing the resolution of models or by bringing in more links.
They require explicit treatment of uncertainties using "synthetic" information
composed of available "hard" data from historical observations, the results of
possible experiments, and scientific facts as well as "soft" data
from experts' opinions, scenarios, stakeholders, and public opinion.
As a result of all these factors, our assessment will always have poor
estimates.
Finally, the role of science for new problems will increasingly deviate
from traditional "deterministic predictions" analysis to the design of
robust strategies against involved uncertainties and risks.
The workshop aims at contributing to a better understanding between
practitioners dealing with management of uncertainty, and scientists
working on either corresponding modeling approaches, or on methods that
can be adapted for improving the understanding and management of uncertainty.
In particular, the contributions on the following issues are invited:
- modeling different types of uncertainty (probabilistic and
non-probabilistic),
- the formulation of appropriate deterministic substitute problems
for different types of uncertainty,
- robustness of efficient solutions with respect to inherent uncertainties,
- imulation tools (for optimal decision/design under uncertainty),
- safety and security of humans, environment, and vital infrastructure
facing catastrophe risks,
- lessons that can be learned from designing and operating
highly reliable systems,
- downscaling methods for handling temporal or spacial scales,
- benefits and costs of (partial) postponing decions (aimed at reducing
uncertainties),
- open problems in the adequate treatment of uncertainties,
- concrete applications in economics, finance, engineering,
energy, population, air quality, climate change, ecology, forestry,
and other environmental problems.
Participation in the workshop
Strong international and interdisciplinary participation is encouraged
for this workshop so that participants can introduce and be introduced
to various perspectives and approaches in the above listed research and
applications areas.
The number of participants in the workshop must be limited,
therefore participation is by invitation only.
The invitations for the workshop will be distributed before June 15, 2007
to authors of accepted presentations.
Prospective participants are kindly requested to complete as soon
as possible (but not later than May 31, 2007) the
preregistration
procedure which is composed of two elements:
- filling in a preregistration form,
- submission of an extended abstract of the proposed contribution.
Program Committee
- Yuri Ermoliev, IIASA, Laxenburg (A)
- Leen Hordijk, IIASA Laxenburg (A)
- Marek Makowski, IIASA, Laxenburg (A)
- Kurt Marti, Federal Armed Forces Univ. Munich (D)
- Gerhard Schuëller, Univ. of Innsbruck (A)
Organizers
The workshop is organized jointly by:
- IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis,
Laxenburg, (A)
- Federal Armed Forces Univ. Munich, (D)
The organizers greatfully acknowledge the support by:
- GAMM - International Association of Applied Mathematics and Mechanics
Dates, organizational details
CwU home page
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