The decision making under uncertainty research is led by Tohid Erfani at UCL’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, along with Kevis Pachos.

The team are developing an adaptive framework for infrastructure planning in multi-sector systems, to address uncertainty associated with climate change and resource demand. They are demonstrating the benefit of this approach by comparing it to formulations of water-energy-systems using a synthetic case study and findings show adaptive infrastrucutre investment in a multi-sector system is efficient (as opposed to static or scheduled planning).

The team are inputting their research into the Pywr simulator to enhance the economic considerations of the systems modellling. 

A further adaptive approach is being developed using a tree-based formulation, as well as a game theory application to water-energy systems to optimise decsision making.

Research update video

This video was produced for the FutureDAMS annual forum (November 2020) as a summary of the team’s research progress.

DMU research

• Decision-Dependent Uncertainty in Adaptive Real-Options Water Resource Planning
• Real-Options Water Supply Planning: Multistage Scenario Trees for Adaptive and Flexible Capacity Expansion Under Probabilistic Climate Change Uncertainty
• Spatial and sectoral benefit distribution in water-energy system design