Two methods of assessment have dominated practice and research for more than 20 years: deliberation by interdisciplinary expert panels and formal modeling. Below we discuss some specific issues of integration that arise in integrated assessment (IA) models. Being more or less integrated is a means toward these ends. And assessment activities should be judged by their contribution to advising policy issues or decisions and perhaps to the advancement of knowledge. Assessments can be more or less integrated. Practitioners and critics of integrated assessment differ over the precise conditions that make an assessment integrated, but we contend that this debate mistakenly treats integration as a binary characteristic and mistakes the means for the end. It is plausible that most useful assessment is integrated to some degree, since few real policy issues or decisions can be usefully advised by drawing only on the knowledge of a single research community. Assessment has been practiced for three decades in particular policy domains under such titles as environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, and technology assessment ( 3, 4), and for longer under such less systematic processes as National Research Council committees or other advisory bodies.Īssessment is integrated according to the breadth of the expert knowledge it synthesizes in advising the issue at hand ( 1, 2, 5, 6). Assessment processes might seek to mine current knowledge to answer specific policy-relevant questions, to identify policy-relevant implications, or to help policy-makers understand what questions they should be asking. Assessment consists of social processes that bridge the domains of knowledge and decision-making, assembling and synthesizing expert scientific or technical knowledge to advise policy or decision-making ( 1, 2). To bound the discussion and place it in context, we first briefly discuss assessment, then integrated assessment, then alternative methods of conducting integrated assessment including formal modeling, the focus of this review. We review recent work in integrated assessment (IA) modeling of global climate change. ![]() ![]() INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT MODELS OF GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: CONTEXT, SCOPE, AND BACKGROUND We review the few significant insights that have been claimed from work to date and identify important challenges for integrated assessment modeling in its relationships to disciplinary knowledge and to broader assessment seeking to inform policy- and decision-making. ![]() We summarize current projects, grouping them according to whether they emphasize the dynamics of emissions control and optimal policy-making, uncertainty, or spatial detail. They may combine simplified representations of the socioeconomic determinants of greenhouse gas emissions, the atmosphere and oceans, impacts on human activities and ecosystems, and potential policies and responses. Integrated assessment models seek to combine knowledge from multiple disciplines in formal integrated representations inform policy-making, structure knowledge, and prioritize key uncertainties and advance knowledge of broad system linkages and feedbacks, particularly between socioeconomic and biophysical processes. ▪ AbstractWe review recent work in the integrated assessment modeling of global climate change.
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