The Risk Management Implications of Using and Sharing Highly Uncertain Climate Information

Uncertainty may be the elephant in the room for utilities planning under climate change. We all know it is there, and that it has huge implications for risk management, but we don’t quite know what to do about it. How do we account for, plan effectively, and communicate internally and externally, given the large uncertainty regarding how climate change may impact water utilities?In this paper, we provide a short overview of research conducted for the Water Research Foundation (WRF) (Raucher et al, 2017) and the Water Utility Climate Alliance (Raucher, et.al., 2016). (The authors appreciate the contributions to this research made by these agencies and the respective project managers, Kenan Ozekin (WRF) and Laurna Kaatz (WUCA)). We present findings from a survey of water utility professionals that illustrates the current state of use of climate information in utilities as well as respondents’ self-identified need for additional education and support materials (Raucher et al, 2016). We then briefly discuss the implications of cognitive heuristics on planning under deep uncertainty, and tools and approaches for ensuring these brain heuristics do not interfere with good decision making. The paper ends with a discussion of how the need to plan for plausible events, versus probable events, changes risk management.