Strategic Engineering

Motivation

“Water resources planning requires decision-making about infrastructure development under uncertainty in future regional climate conditions. However, uncertainty in climate change projections will evolve over the 100-year lifetime of a dam as new climate observations become available. Flexible strategies in which infrastructure is proactively designed to be changed in the future have the potential to meet water supply needs without expensive overbuilding.” (Abstract, p. 1)

Additionally, “the United Nations Environment Program estimates that the cost of climate change adaptation investments in the developing world may reach $500 billion per year by 2050.” This highlights the need for efficient and targeted resource allocation. (Introduction, p. 2)

Methodologies

• Bayesian Analysis: “We adapt a Bayesian statistical model to update initial climate uncertainty estimates for each virtual climate observation.” (Introduction, p. 2)
• Stochastic Dynamic Programming (SDP): “Updated uncertainty estimates characterize the transition probabilities in a non-stationary stochastic dynamic program (SDP); each possible change in SDP climate state is equivalent to a virtual climate observation. This SDP planning formulation takes into account all the potential new information that may be learned in the future as it develops optimal planning policies.” (Introduction, p. 2)

Insights

• Flexibility Prevents Overbuilding and Leverages Learning: Flexible infrastructure strategies reduce unnecessary investments while ensuring service reliability and uses the delayed benefits of learning. “Results show that climate change uncertainty can be reduced over the lifetime of an infrastructure project across different climate change trajectories. Flexibility is effective in preventing unnecessary infrastructure additions while maintaining similar reliability.” (Introduction, p. 2)
• Flexibility Enables Access for Vulnerable Communities:  Flexible infrastructure designs not only reduce overbuilding risks but also allocate resources more effectively to support underserved areas. “This approach identifies opportunities to reliably use incremental approaches, enabling adaptation investments to reach more vulnerable communities with fewer resources.” (Abstract, p. 1)

Training

Relevant lectures:

• Paradigm change in engineering systems and planning
• How to optimise design and decision-making under uncertainty
• How to manage the design process

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