Decision Support Tool Utility: Connecting with Decision Making Processes

This webinar with Holly Hartmann, Director of Climate Science Adaptations for Carpe Diem West, focuses on using decision support tools to make and implement decisions, by connecting DSTs with real-world decision making processes. 

Climate-related DSTs have typically been implemented as stand-alone tools limited in the scope of their application. But real-world decisions require suites of tools that move decision makers through the stages of scoping, analyzing, prioritizing, and implementing decisions, which involve other tools and different individuals at each stage. 

The DST Utility Evaluation Framework emphasizes how decisions require many tools, with information flowing from one tool to another, and with handoffs of results from one stage of decision making to another. It is organized around an iterative risk management (IRM) framework, recommended by the National Academy of Sciences as the most appropriate decision framework for climate change adaptation decisions, supplemented with elements from efforts of the Carpe Diem West network and others to identify toolkits for decision makers.