Uncertainty Quantification with Experts: Present Status and Research Needs

Anca M Hanea; Victoria Hemming; Gabriela F Nane

doi:10.1111/risa.13718

Uncertainty Quantification with Experts: Present Status and Research Needs

Risk Anal. 2022 Feb;42(2):254-263. doi: 10.1111/risa.13718. Epub 2021 Feb 24.

Authors

Anca M Hanea¹, Victoria Hemming², Gabriela F Nane³

Affiliations

¹ Centre of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
² Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
³ Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands.

PMID: 33629402
DOI: 10.1111/risa.13718

Abstract

Expert elicitation is deployed when data are absent or uninformative and critical decisions must be made. In designing an expert elicitation, most practitioners seek to achieve best practice while balancing practical constraints. The choices made influence the required time and effort investment, the quality of the elicited data, experts' engagement, the defensibility of results, and the acceptability of resulting decisions. This piece outlines some of the common choices practitioners encounter when designing and conducting an elicitation. We discuss the evidence supporting these decisions and identify research gaps. This will hopefully allow practitioners to better navigate the literature, and will inspire the expert judgment research community to conduct well powered, replicable experiments that properly address the research gaps identified.

Keywords: CM; IDEA; SHELF; expert elicitation protocols; uncertainty quantification.

MeSH terms

Judgment*
Uncertainty