Title: Eliciting expert judgements for rational decision support when scientific uncertainty is ascendant.

Summary:

Critical decisions often need to be made urgently in the face of major scientific uncertainties or inadequate data. Using an empirical performance scoring criterion for weighting individual experts’ scientific judgments, Cooke’s Classical Model provides a basis for determining informative rational consensus uncertainty judgements from a group of experts. The basic concepts will be outlined and a few applications to important real-world problems will be described, including some related to public health policy issues.

Biography:

Prof. Willy Aspinall is a consulting Chartered Scientist and Chartered Geologist, formerly Cabot Professor in Natural Hazards and Risk Science at the University of Bristol UK.  His main interests are probabilistic risk assessment, volcanology and seismology, and the formalised use of expert judgement in decision-making for low probability, high consequence events in circumstances of scientific uncertainty. He specialises in facilitating expert elicitations in medical, climate, Earth science, and other science-based fields.  He was awarded the 2012 William Smith Medal of the Geological Society of London for his contributions to applied geoscience, and was co-recipient with Bristol University colleagues of the 2014 Lloyd’s of London Science of Risk Prize for Natural Hazards and the 2015 The Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education. Aspinall was appointed CMG in 2017 for services to Montserrat in connection with that island’s volcanic eruption emergency.

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