1st Edition
Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks
Experts, despite their importance and value, can be double-edged swords. They can make valuable contributions from their deep base of knowledge, but those contributions may also contain their own biases and pet theories. Therefore, selecting experts, eliciting their opinions, and aggregating their opinions must be performed and handled carefully, with full recognition of the uncertainties inherent in those opinions.
Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks illuminates those uncertainties and builds a foundation of philosophy, background, methods, and guidelines that helps its readers effectively execute the elicitation process. Based on the first-hand experiences of the author, the book is filled with illustrations, examples, case studies, and applications that demonstrate not only the methods and successes of expert opinion elicitation, but also its pitfalls and failures.
Studies show that in the future, analysts, engineers, and scientists will need to solve ever more complex problems and reach decisions with limited resources. This will lead to an increased reliance on the proper treatment of uncertainty and on the use of expert opinions. Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks will help prepare you to better understand knowledge and ignorance, to successfully elicit expert opinions, to select appropriate expressions of those opinions, and to use various methods to model and aggregate opinions.
Information Abundance and Ignorance
The Nature of Knowledge
Cognition and Cognitive Science
Time and its Asymmetry
Defining Ignorance in the Context of Knowledge
Exercise Problems
Information-Based System Definition
Introduction
System Definition Models
Hierarchical Definitions of Systems
Models for Ignorance and Uncertainty Types
Systems Complexity
Exercise Problems
Experts, Opinions, and Elicitation Methods
Introduction
Experts, and Expert Opinions
Historical Background
Scientific Heuristics
Rational Consensus
Elicitation Methods
Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing
Methods of Social Research
Focus Groups
Exercise Problems
Expressing and Modeling Expert Opinions
Introduction
Set Theory
Monotone Measures
Exercise Problems
Consensus and Aggregating Expert Opinions
Introduction
Methods of Scoring of Expert Opinions
Uncertainty Measures
Combining Expert Opinions
Exercise Problems
Guidance on Expert-Opinion Elicitation
Introduction and Terminology
Classification of Issues, Study Levels, Experts, and Process Outcomes
Process Definition
Need Identification for Expert-Opinion Elicitation
Selection of Study Level and Study Leader
Selection of Peer Reviewers and Experts
Identification, Selection, and Development of Technical Issues
Elicitation of Opinions
Documentation and Communication
Exercise Problems
Applications of Expert-Opinion Elicitation
Introduction
Assessment of Occurrence Probabilities
Economic Consequences of Floods
References
Indexes
Biography
Bilal M. Ayyub
