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Rechard, Robert P.

doi:10.1023/a:1007058325258

Cited by 23 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…Additionally, the choice of performance goals may ultimately be decided by some combination of community engagement and consensus, intergovernmental panels focused on the sociopolitical impacts of climate change and climate intervention and scientific research. We look to the history of the EPA's establishment of acceptable release criteria for nuclear waste disposal, in which input was taken from public meetings, as well as from the scientific community, as an example (Rechard, 1999). The scientific community can provide key information on the relevancy of a performance goal toward addressing scientifically significant measures of climate change.…”

Section: Regional Risk Ratiosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance assessment for climate intervention (PACI): preliminary application to a stratospheric aerosol injection scenario

Wheeler,

Zeitler,

Brunell

et al. 2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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As the prospect of exceeding global temperature targets set forth in the Paris Agreement becomes more likely, methods of climate intervention are increasingly being explored. With this increased interest there is a need for an assessment process to understand the range of impacts across different scenarios against a set of performance goals in order to support policy decisions. The methodology and tools developed for Performance Assessment (PA) for nuclear waste repositories shares many similarities with the needs and requirements for a framework for climate intervention. Using PA, we outline and test an evaluation framework for climate intervention, called Performance Assessment for Climate Intervention (PACI) with a focus on Stratospheric Aerosol Injection (SAI). We define a set of key technical components for the example PACI framework which include identifying performance goals, the extent of the system, and identifying which features, events, and processes are relevant and impactful to calculating model output for the system given the performance goals. Having identified a set of performance goals, the performance of the system, including uncertainty, can then be evaluated against these goals. Using the Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) scenario, we develop a set of performance goals for monthly temperature, precipitation, drought index, soil water, solar flux, and surface runoff. The assessment assumes that targets may be framed in the context of risk-risk via a risk ratio, or the ratio of the risk of exceeding the performance goal for the SAI scenario against the risk of exceeding the performance goal for the emissions scenario. From regional responses, across multiple climate variables, it is then possible to assess which pathway carries lower risk relative to the goals. The assessment is not comprehensive but rather a demonstration of the evaluation of an SAI scenario. Future work is needed to develop a more complete assessment that would provide additional simulations to cover parametric and aleatory uncertainty and enable a deeper understanding of impacts, informed scenario selection, and allow further refinements to the approach.

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Section: Regional Risk Ratiosmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance assessment for climate intervention (PACI): preliminary application to a stratospheric aerosol injection scenario

Wheeler,

Zeitler,

Brunell

et al. 2023

Front. Environ. Sci.

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“…In the 1990s, a distinction between PA and PRA needed to be maintained because PA did not necessarily imply a probabilistic evaluation of uncertainties [8]. In the United States, however, PA and PRA, as practiced, were synonymous because performance criteria were risk based and uncertainties were systematically evaluated using probabilistic methods [9]. Already in the mid-1980s, the U.S. regulatory framework specifically required the use of the PPA approach (e.g., EPA's 40 CFR 191.12 [10]).…”

Section: Probabilistic Performance Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic Performance Assessment vs. the Safety Case Approach

Diaz-Maurin

Ewing

2019

MRS Advances

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The “safety case” approach has been developed to address the issue of evaluating the performance of a geologic repository in the face of the large uncertainty that results for evaluations that extend over hundreds of thousands of years. This paper reviews the concept of the safety case as it has been defined by the international community. We contrast the safety case approach with that presently used in the U.S. repository program. Especially, we focus on the role of uncertainty quantification. There are inconsistencies between the initial proposal to dealing with uncertainties in a safety case and current U.S. practice. The paper seeks to better define the safety case concept so that it can be usefully applied to the regulatory framework of the U.S. repository program.

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“…It has become a central principle of risk-benefit analysis that risk can be quantified as probability times consequence; indeed, this principle was first established in the context of nuclear power accidents, classic low-probability, high-consequence events. (33) In the absence of reasons to depart from this approach, the principle of equal treatment would seem to dictate equal treatment of predictable and unpredictable statistical lives.…”

Section: Ethical and Policy Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Underprotection of Unpredictable Statistical Lives Compared to Predictable Ones

2016

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Existing ethical discussion considers the differences in care for identified versus statistical lives. However there has been little attention to the different degrees of care that are taken for different kinds of statistical lives. Here we argue that for a given number of statistical lives at stake, there will sometimes be different, and usually greater care taken to protect predictable statistical lives, in which the number of lives that will be lost can be predicted fairly accurately, than for unpredictable statistical lives, where the lives are at stake because of a low-probability event, such that most likely no one will be affected by the decision but with low probability some lives will be at stake. One reason for this difference is the statistical challenge of estimating low probabilities, and in particular the tendency of common approaches to underestimate these probabilities. Another is the existence of rational incentives to treat unpredictable risks as if the probabilities were lower than they are. Some of these factors apply outside the pure economic context, to institutions, individuals, and governments. We argue that there is no ethical reason to treat unpredictable statistical lives differently from predictable statistical lives. Moreover, lives that are unpredictable from the perspective of an individual agent may become predictable when aggregated to the level of a societal decision. Underprotection of unpredictable statistical lives is a form of market failure that may need to be corrected by altering regulation, introducing compulsory liability insurance, or other social policies.

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Untitled

Cited by 23 publications

References 92 publications

Performance assessment for climate intervention (PACI): preliminary application to a stratospheric aerosol injection scenario

Performance assessment for climate intervention (PACI): preliminary application to a stratospheric aerosol injection scenario

Probabilistic Performance Assessment vs. the Safety Case Approach

Underprotection of Unpredictable Statistical Lives Compared to Predictable Ones

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