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Current Research at ISERP

Center for Research on Environmental Decisions

by David Krantz (Psychology), Elke Weber (Psychology), Roberta Balstad (ISERP), and Kenneth Broad (ISERP)

Decisions based on weather and climate predictions impact critical matters such as agricultural production, water supply and usage, and public health. Yet the uncertainty surrounding climate change and interannual climate variability, and the potential threats associated with it, complicate the decision making process. If we can better understand how people deal with such uncertainty, we can improve the way in which people can adapt to increased variability and change with better decision tools, including improvements in the format and delivery of climate forecasts.

The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED) will investigate these questions. Bridging the social and natural sciences, CRED is a joint center of ISERP and the Earth Institute, and is affiliated with ISERP's Center for the Decision Sciences. The Center also involves researchers at universities across the country and at international sites.

The Center was established with one of five "Decision Making Under Uncertainty" awards made nationwide in 2004 by the National Science Foundation's Human and Social Dynamics program. The other four went to Arizona State, Carnegie-Mellon, Colorado at Boulder, and the Rand Corporation.

CRED will produce basic research on environmental decision making, drawing from recent progress in the descriptive decision sciences. Individual and group decision mechanisms have generally been studied separately, the first by cognitive and social psychologists, the second by other social scientists such as sociologists or anthropologists. The new Center will integrate these different approaches, and will provide research that is based both in the laboratory and in field sites around the world.