May 22-24, 2017, Paris.

Photo by Zsuzsanna Nagy
In a wide range of human domains – from reaction to climate change, energy policy, regulations of new technologies, economic policy – decisions are dogged by extreme uncertainties. How should one decide in the face of such uncertainties? How should they be represented, and indeed measured, to best aid informed decision making?
These questions are relevant in many different domains, but so far they have dealt with these uncertainties in relative isolation. There is little interaction among risk analysts’ methods, engineers’ techniques, decision theorists’ models, philosopher’s analyses, not to mention the relevant domains of statistics, environmental economics, or the practice concerning uncertainty representation and communication in climate science or the nuclear energy sector. The aim of this workshop is to bring together practitioners and researchers from some of these fields around the two central questions posed above.
The hope will be that by fostering the discussion and confrontation of results, methods and practices, this workshop will contribute to a better understanding of the affinities and divergences among the approaches dominant in different sectors, and ultimately to the development of more unified and robust approach to the challenges posed by uncertainty.
This page contains recordings of the talks and discussions that took place at this workshop.
Monday 22 May, Morning Session
Charles Manski (Economics, Northwestern University)
Identification Problems, Statistical Imprecision, and Medical Decisions under Ambiguity
Robert Lempert (Pardee RAND Graduate School)
Robust Decision Making: Current Practice and Future Directions in Deliberation and Social Choice
Monday 22 May, Afternoon Session
Seamus Bradley (Philosophy, Tilburg University)
Rational Decisions under Severe Uncertainty: A Philosophical Perspective
Marc Fleurbaey (Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University)
Tuesday 23 May, Morning Session
Anthony O’Hagan (Mathematics and Statistics, University of Sheffield
Katharine Mach (Earth System Science, Stanford University)
Unleashing Expert Judgment in Assessment: IPCC AR5 and Beyond
David Stainforth (Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, LSE)
Decision-Specific Explorations of Climate Response Uncertainties with Complex Models – The Role of Non-Discountable Envelopes
Tuesday 23 May, Afternoon Session
Yakov Ben-Haim (Mechanical Engineering, Technion)
Innovation, Optimization and their Dilemmas: An Info-Gap Perspective
Casey Helgeson (GREGHEC, CNRS-HEC Paris)
A Comparison of Approaches to Deep Uncertainty: Decision Theory and Decision Support
Christian Gollier (Economics, Toulouse School of Economics)
An Economic Evaluation of our Responsibilities Towards Future Generations
Wednesday 24 May, Morning Session
Itzhak Gilboa (Economics and Decision Sciences, HEC Paris & Tel-Aviv University)
Second-Order Induction, Precedents, and Divergence of Opinions