Robust decision-making


Case Study 1: Lempert and Collins (2007)

October 1, 2025

Test your recall

Define key concepts

Spend a few minutes writing down your definitions of:

  • Well-characterized uncertainty
  • Optimal expected utility
  • Deep uncertainty
  • Precautionary principle
  • Robust decision
  • Regret
  • Satisficing
  • Keeping options open

Discuss results

  • What visual languages accompany different types of robustness metrics?
  • What strategy should the decision-makers choose?

Scrutinize key concepts

Let’s discuss:

  • Well-characterized vs. deep uncertainty
  • Optimal expected utility vs. robustness
  • Precautionary principle vs. robustness
  • Regret vs. satisficing
  • Considering too little vs. too much

Applying concepts to our decision problems

Example - home elevation problem

  • What can I do to know what robustness metrics are relevant?
  • Do beliefs about uncertain drivers or problem scope uncertainties matter more?

Your examples

Let’s take turns applying some new concepts to our problem framing.

Logistics

This week

  • We’ll go over the RDM tutorial on Friday together

Next week

  • Monday - high-level overview of considering and navigating tradeoffs in our decision problems
  • Wednesday - case study (who can lead?)
  • Friday - tutorial on visualizing trade-offs