A sophisticated reader ought to view with great skepticism the prospect of answering questions about the long-term future. The checkered history of predicting the future-from the famous declarations that humans would never fly to the Limits to Growth study to claims about the "New Economy"-has dissuaded policymakers from considering the effects of their decisions more than a few months or years ahead. However, today's choices will significantly influence the course of the twenty-first century. New analytic methods, enabled by modern computers, may transform our ability to reason systematically about the long term. This report reviews traditional methods of grappling with the morrow, from narratives to scenario analysis, which fail to address the multiplicity of plausible long-term futures. The authors demonstrate a quantitative approach to long-term policy analysis (LTPA). Robust decision methods enable decisionmakers to examine a vast range of plausible futures and design near-term, often adaptive, strategies to be robust across them. Reframing the question "What will the long-term future bring?" as "How can we choose actions today that will be consistent with our long-term interests?" these methods provide powerful analytic support to humans' innate capacity for "what-if-ing." Choosing the challenge of sustainable development as an example, the authors discuss how these methods may be applied to real-world LTPA and a wide range of other challenges of decisionmaking under conditions of deep uncertainty.
How could producing 25 percent of U.S. electricity and motor-vehicle transportation fuels from renewables by the year 2025 affect U.S. consumer energy expenditures and CO2 emissions? This report finds that reaching 25 percent renewables with limited impact on expenditures requires significant progress in renewable-energy technologies and biomass production. Without substantial innovation in these areas, expenditures could increase considerably.
Defense planning faces significant uncertainties. This report applies robust decision making (RDM) to the air-delivered munitions mix challenge. RDM is quantitative, decision support methodology designed to inform decisions under conditions of deep uncertainty and complexity. This proof-of-concept demonstration suggests that RDM could help defense planners make plans more robust to a wide range of hard-to-predict futures.
This report is the last of a six-volume series in which RAND explores the elements of a national strategy for the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. It analyzes U.S. strengths and weaknesses, and suggests adaptations for this new era of turbulence and uncertainty. The report offers three alternative strategic concepts and evaluates their underlying assumptions, costs, risks, and constraints.
This book provides a comprehensive review of the theory, research, and applications in Industrial and Organizational (I/O) Psychology. Analyzing three primary objectives of I/O psychology: improving the effectiveness of employees and organizations, enhancing employee well-being, and gaining an understanding of human behavior in organizations.
The first in a series exploring the elements of a national strategy for U.S. foreign policy, this book examines the most critical decisions likely to face the next president. The book covers global and regional issues and spotlights the long-term policy issues and organizational, financial, and diplomatic challenges that will confront senior U.S. officials in 2017 and beyond.
What are the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act's effects on the market for terrorism insurance? What would be the effect of enhancing provisions for nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological (NBCR) attacks? The authors conclude that the program yields positive outcomes in a number of dimensions for conventional attacks and identify specific reforms that can improve results for NBCR attacks.
An important resource for the synthesis of intermediates of specialty chemicals, pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals. Aromatic Hydroxyketones from Butanone to Dotriacontanone provides the reader with exhaustive information covering structure, preparation, physicochemical characteristics, as well as a related bibliography. The handbook is presented in dictionary style, with a logical classification of the ketones, making the information easily available for consultation. The book is aimed at those working in research, development and production applications in various industries (chemistry, pharmacy, cosmetics, paints and perfumes).
Next Generation Environmental Technologies (NGETs) focus on the redesign of manufacturing processes and products at the molecular level, with the goal of reducing or eliminating the use of hazardous materials. The authors examine the research, development, and commercialization of NGETs-many derived from "green chemistry"-assess their benefits, and outline ways to reduce barriers to their development and implementation.
Security Operations Management, Fourth Edition, the latest release in this seminal reference on corporate security management operations for today’s security management professionals and students, explores the characteristics of today’s globalized workplaces, security’s key role within them, and what the greatest concern is for security practitioners and senior managers. Incorporating the latest security research and best practices, the book covers key skills needed by security managers to demonstrate the value of their security program, offers information on identifying and managing risk, and reviews the latest technological advances in security control, command, communications and computing. Includes myriad global cases and examples of both the business and technical aspects of security Offers valuable coverage of cybercrime and workplace violence Explores the latest technological advances in security control, command, communications, and computing, along with current techniques for how prospective security personnel are vetted, including via social media Prepares security professionals for certification exams
Discusses a study that used a new approach to address the conditions under which California can preserve access to public higher education over the next two decades. The new approach, exploratory modeling, abandons the best-estimate method, instead combining traditional quantitative forecasting with scenario planning to produce, via computer simulation and data similar to those used in other studies, plausible scenarios of the future that clarify key uncertainties facing decisionmakers and provide a framework for stakeholder debate and policy-choice comparison. Presents the scenarios in color-illustrated form, called landscapes of plausible futures, to examine how the interrelationship of three key factors -- demand for higher education, competition for state revenues, and potential productivity improvements -- may affect California higher education. Shows that trends in state funding and productivity improvements dominate the question of future access. Points out that these landscapes could be used in a further study to compare the performance of potential policy choices as a way to determine the best policies to pursue.
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