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Thematic Guide to Integrated Assessment Modeling
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Section 3: Design Issues in Integrated Assessment
This section discusses two kinds of issues likely to arise in any project in integrated assessment. The first are broad issues that must be addressed by any assessment, whether of climate or another issue: the purpose of the assessment, who its audience is, and how it should be bounded and organized. The second are problems of how to represent particular components of the climate issue, which are organized around a conventional causal chain from human activities to impacts. This discussion summarizes the main approaches used to represent each component that are taken by current assessment projects, with particular emphasis on those pieces whose representation poses the most significant challenges.Purpose, Design, and Other Large-Scale (Non-Representational) Issues --issues inherent to all integrated assessment projects
- Audience, Purpose, and Relationship--matching the assessment to its audience and the purpose it is intended to serve
- How Integrated and Over What Dimensions?--determining the necessary scope of integration
- Integrated Assessment and Integrated Models--comparing different activities, often confused
- Flexibility, Abstraction and Accessibility--designing assessment to incorporate changing knowledge
- Future Emissions Paths--three major approaches to projecting emissions
- Technological Change--a powerful determinant of long-term emissions paths that is not well-understood
- Population Growth--another powerful determinant of long-term emissions paths
- Land Use--beginning projects to represent land-related emissions and impacts
- Atmosphere and Oceans--reduced-form representations of chemistry and climate
- Ecological Impacts--changes in location and properties of ecosystems
- Socioeconomic Impacts--estimates of the value of climate-induced changes to people
- Treatment of Uncertainty--knowledge, uncertainty, and information in integrated assessments
- Discounting--an evaluation of future changes relative to present ones
- Resolution--the challenge of combining, reconciling, and propagating information available at various spatial and temporal scales
- Representing Policies--abatement, adaptation, and geoengineering measures
- Incorporating Political Processes and Negotiation--decisions and behaviors of other agents that affect climate change
The next page is Audience, Purpose, and Relationship.