Decision Point
Decision Point is a monthly magazine funded by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions (CEED) and the National Environmental Research Program (NERP) Environmental Decisions Hub. It was established in 2007 as a fortnightly news letter of the Applied Environmental Decision Analysis CERF Hub (AEDA).
This page is dedicated to a short contribution that I submitted to Decision Point on October 1, 2013, entitled
Severe uncertainty and info-gap decision theory: a perspective from the Land of the Black Swan
(Download the PDF file)I shall update this page as soon as I hear from the Editor.
For the time being, consider this text that appeared as a NoteBox in the AEDA Info Sheet entitled Accounting for uncertainty in designing marine reserves (Decision Point, Issue 16, 2008, p. 5):
In cases of severe uncertainty In cases where a decision is required in conditions of severe uncertainty it's possible to use a technique as info-gap analysis. For example suppose you wanted to evaluate the optimal spacing between reserves but you only have a best guess for the dispersal distance of the species you want to conserve and this best guess is highly uncertain by an unknown amount.Info-gap theory approaches uncertainty analysis from the opposite direction as probabilistic methods. Rather than specifying the extent of uncertainty in parameters at the outset, info-gap theory takes the position that the best management strategy is the one that gives us an outcome that is acceptable under the greatest level of unfavorable uncertainty. That is, we choose a strategy that maximizes the reliability of an adequate outcome.
Yakov Ben-Haim, one of the AEDA chief investigators based in Israel, is the inventor of Info-gap theory and has helped many AEDA members to understand and use this novel concept.
Contrast this assessment of info-gap decision theory with the assessment provided in my Third and Final Call for The Reassessment of the Use and Promotion of Info-Gap Decision Theory in Australia.
Stay tuned! (October 3, 2013)
Updates:
Update 1: October 15, 2013
I have received the expected rejection letter from the magazine's editor. It reads as follows:
9 October 2013 4:54 PM
RE: Contribution to Decision Point
Dear Moshe
Thanks for this contribution. Sorry for the slow response. ?????????????????????.
Decision Point is the magazine of a network of researchers and practitioners that are directly involved in conservation decision making. It aims to convey the research of our scientists to our stakeholders. In years gone by, when we were a smaller network, it was possible to include a variety of stories from beyond our ranks but that is seldom possible these days. If we do include stories from outside our research groups, they tend to be perspectives by field practitioners, not other academics. I have a back log of stories that will fill issues of Decision Point well into next year (with many being added all the time). Therefore, I'm sorry to say I do not have the capacity to publish your story.
I can, if you wish, include a mention of your article and website in our weekly newsletter, Dbytes. It goes out to all members of the EDG.
Regards
?????
My reply was as follows:
9 October 2013 5:44 PM
RE: Contribution to Decision Point
Dear ?????:
Many thanks for your note.
While I do appreciate your position, given the role of AEDA, and in fact Decision Point itself, in the promotion of IGDT in Australia, I do believe that my contribution does have a place in one of the future issues of the magazine.
However, I do no plan to argue with you on this matter. I shall simply post my proposed contribution, and your rejection letter, on my website, and then discuss this matter in more detail.
See http://info-gap.moshe-online.com/DecisionPoint/
I would greatly appreciate it if you could include a reference to this URL in one of the forthcoming issues of Decision Point.
For the benefit of ????? and ?????? I attach a copy of my proposed contribution.
Best wishes
Moshe
In due course I'll explain why, the Editor's decision notwithstanding, this contribution should definitely be published in the magazine.
Update 2: May 25, 2014
On May 14, 2014, David Fox posted an interesting note, entitled Information-gap decision theory creates a gap in ecological applications and then fills it, on the website of Environmetrics Australia.
In due course I shall respond to David's note.
At present I merely note that in 2008 David published a short note on IGDT entitled To IG or not to IG?-- that is the question in Decision Point (Issue 24, pp.10-11). So naturally I ask myself: should David's 2014 note be of interest to readers of Decision Point?
In any case, here is a short quote from David's 2014 note:
In their recent letter to Ecological Applications, Burgman and Regan (2014) provide counter arguments to some of Sniedovich's (2012) severe, and mostly harsh criticisms of Ben-Haim's info-gap decision theory (IGDT) (Ben-Haim, 2006). While I have a deep respect for Professor Burgman and Dr. Regan, I believe their unwavering faith in info-gap theory is misplaced. As the title of this note suggests, I agree with Sniedovich (2014) that `the gap' referred to by Burgman and Regan (2014) is illusionary.
Hence, I ask myself: should a discussion on Burgman and Regan's (2014) illusionary gap be of interest to Decision Point's readership?
Stay tuned! (May 25, 2014)
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