Advancing uncertainty prioritisation in water resource management

Photo by Robert Ruggiero on Unsplash

Better decision-making depends on better management of uncertainty, but how can we evaluate and improve how uncertainty is managed? 

What problem is being tackled, and why is it important? 

Decision making is a minor miracle: it requires a collapse of uncertainty, with one decision being made despite countless ways of deciding, possible alternatives, and potential consequences. In practice, uncertainty is never eliminated, and decisions are accompanied by a variety of arrangements to manage uncertainty. Uncertainty management often happens without us being aware of it, yet it forms the basis of the credibility, relevance, and legitimacy of decisions and decision support, and shared norms about knowledge governance underpin trust and effectiveness of water management at all scales.  

If we want to make sure that recommendations for change can actually be adopted, we need to understand how uncertainty is currently managed, and how the organisation as a whole and its broader supporting system will need to adapt to the change being made. And to improve management of uncertainty, we also need to improve uncertainty literacy: the ability to recognise how uncertainty is managed, awareness of alternatives, and the ability to describe and discuss the consequences of uncertainty management. Everyone makes decisions under uncertainty: policymakers, farmers, researchers, and other community members, but each context is different. There is no single “correct” means of managing uncertainty; instead, we need to build society’s capacity to reflect on how uncertainty is currently managed, and what improvements they would like to make. 

Who at the IWF is involved in this project? 

Dr Joseph Guillaume, an IWF Research Fellow, leads an ARC-funded Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) project (April 2019-2022) developing a holistic framework for prioritisation of uncertainties in Integrated Water Resource Assessment and Management. The project and is centred around a set of case studies involving IWF and external students, partners, and other collaborators in an iterative transdisciplinary research process, combining modelling, value of information analyses, computer science, text analysis, interviews and workshops. 

What are the project’s aims and/or findings? 

This project aims to develop a holistic framework for prioritisation of uncertainties in Integrated Water Resource Assessment and Management. This will help scientists, consultants, policy makers and water users better select which sources of uncertainty to address in their work, with what resources, and what methods. 

Expected outcomes are novel and innovative analytical methods to: 

  1. Evaluate current practice in uncertainty prioritisation, 
  2. Communicate when and how to use established and novel uncertainty management techniques, 
  3. Improve prioritisation of uncertainty using proof-of-concept model-based analyses. 

The project should improve decision making in policy and industry, and societal and environmental outcomes of water management. 

The project has demonstrated the effectiveness of looking for notions about certainty and uncertainty being pulled into a decision making process through text analysis, process tracing, and analysis of arguments. These notions take many forms from probabilities and bounds, to qualifiers used in sentences, and concepts like “pilot” or “feasibility” studies. Case studies aiming for organisational change in uncertainty management have shown the value of making expectations explicit and following the ripple effect through an organisation to plan transition processes rather than jumping straight in. New ways of visualising uncertainty management and providing reference materials can foster conversation.  They encourage a move away from ignoring or being dominated by uncertainty, instead engaging with uncertainty and explicitly prioritising means to characterise and manage its effects, including  means to reduce it. 

Acknowledgement of Country

The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.