 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Vision and Goals |
| Research Projects |
| lab |
| field |
| theoretical Seminars |
CRED Vision
There has been considerable advance in the scientific understanding of decision making over the past 30 years. Yet much of the focus has been on decision making by individuals, while many environmental decisions are made by groups, or involve group goals (including goals for future generations). CRED is trying to extend current conceptions to include both group processes and group goals adopted by individuals.
The research focus is environmental decisions, especially those that arise in the course of adaptation to climate variability and mitigation of or adaptation to global climate change. CRED will use research results to design and to evaluate possible decision aids, including tools that facilitate use of scientific information about the natural and social environment and tools that may lead to better group decisions.
The research focus is environmental decisions, especially those that arise in the course of adaptation to climate variability and mitigation of or adaptation to global climate change. CRED will use research results to design and to evaluate possible decision aids, including tools that facilitate use of scientific information about the natural and social environment and tools that may lead to better group decisions.
CRED Goals
Research Goals
- To integrate goals held by group or organizations into theories of individual decision making
- To extend social-science theory of constructive and context-dependent choice from individual decisions to the group and organizational level, in order to identify ways of designing decision tools, instruments, practices, institutions and environments that will improve decision making related to climate and its impacts.
- To improve the communication of scientific information (including seasonal and long-term climate forecasts) to lay audiences by improving our understanding of the mental representation of uncertainty and of decision goals and objectives.
- To reexamine microeconomic analyses relevant to climate through improved understanding of individual and organizational decision processes
- To share research instruments as appropriate to foster comparison of results across studies.
- To collaborate and share research findings with researchers and research groups in other institutions worldwide.
Education Goals
- To advance undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral education related to the intersection of the social and physical sciences in the context of better understanding and facilitating adaptive human behavior in the face of long-term (climate) uncertainty.
- To demonstrate to highschool and undergraduate students the social relevance of a social science research program that intersects with the physical sciences, as a way of attracting students (especially from minority populations) to science.
- To provide a scientific underpinning for improvements in training for group decision making in the public, private, and non-governmental sectors.
Outreach Goals
- To develop and disseminate decision support tools that
- help people understand climate variables
- enhance intuitions about climate change, climate uncertainty, and climate variability by concretizing probabilistic and sequential events;
- train individuals and group leaders in methods that provide for the consideration of a more optimal number of frames, goals, and choice alternatives; and
- organize information sharing and group discussion and decision processes in ways beneficial to group decisions under climate uncertainty.
- To disseminate Center research results to decision makers at all levels including policy makers, the public sector, the research community and educators. A central aspect to our outreach approach is involving potential end-users of climate information in the design of research and product development.
Cross-Cutting Goals
- To integrate theory development and testing across the different levels of analysis typical of different social sciences, to more fully understand the full range of determinants of perceptions, attitudes, decisions, and actions impacted by climate variability or climate change
- psychological level of analysis: individuals and small groups
- economic/sociological level of analysis: collectives, markets, aggregates
- anthropological level of analysis: culturally distinguishable groups
- analysis of decision patterns over long periods of time.
- To produce synergy among the research activities in different projects: so that the CRED contribution will be larger than the sum of its parts. Laboratory, field, and theory projects should inform other projects in their category and in other categories.
- To integrate theory development and application in our research. This co-production of knowledge increases the likelihood of our information being used.
 Copyright© 1997-2004.The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York.
|
 |