9:10am-10:00am
Resource Allocation Models for Terrorism Risk Management
Don N. Kleinmuntz, PhD
Executive Vice President and CFO, Strata Decision Technology, LLC; and Research Professor of Policy and Management and of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Southern California
Managing terrorism risk requires assessing and prioritizing threats, and allocating resources in a cost-effective manner. This presentation will describe a decision analysis approach for optimal counterterrorism resource allocation intended to help homeland security officials or other decision makers accomplish this. Kleinmuntz draws on work from USC’s counterterrorism research center on analytical, technical, and organizational aspects of counterterrorism risk management, including:
• Techniques for assessing terrorism threats, including probabilistic risk analysis or qualitative assessments by experts, as appropriate;
• Issues in assessing the consequences of potential terror attacks, including accounting for indirect economic effects and weighing economic consequences against lives lost;
• Challenges likely to be encountered when decision makers have deadlines, limited data and few analytical resources;
• Understanding assumptions that lead to linear versus nonlinear discrete formulations, and the implications;
• New approaches that may be easier to implement, such as robust optimization methods.
10:30am-11:20am
Getting the Budget to Yes: A Proven Process of Deliberative Resource Allocation
Kenneth P. Kuskey, PhD, Senior Principal, Innovative Decisions, Inc.
Peter Drucker advised, "Decisions of the kind the executive has to make ... are made well only if based on the clash of conflicting views.... The first rule of decision making is that one does not make a decision unless there is disagreement." Surely this is good advice, but is it feasible for annual budget-formulation decisions in government agencies? Such decisions have vast scope, perhaps thousands of new initiatives, and always shifting stakeholder demands. How can one generate and resolve conflicts practically for such decisions? This talk describes deliberative processes that work when there is a will to make good decisions, not just more decisions, and to increase mission impact, not just split the pie again. The talk covers:
• A conceptual framework;
• Steps of the overall process; and
• Three uses of "deliberative decision analysis" to generate program guidance, measure preferences for budget initiatives, and select initiatives that maximize budget impact.
11:30am-12:20pm
Decision Making at Local Government: Does Decision Analysis Have Anything
to Add?
Daniel R. Pitzler, Consulting Economist, Decision Analysis, CH2M Hill
Decision analysis has been used to make better decisions for many complex problems in industry and government. However, the applied DA literature rarely addresses problems faced by local and regional government. This begs the question of whether or not decision analysis has anything to offer local government, and if so, how has it been used and what are the challenges and opportunities one faces when applying DA concepts in this arena. Pitzler will explore:
• The lack of local government applications of decision analysis in the literature and conference proceedings, and possible reasons why this has occurred;
• Challenges faced by decision makers in local government;
• Case studies of how decision analysis has been used in local government applications;
• A framework that has been shown to be effective in local government decision making.
2:00pm-2:50pm
The Battle Against Bayesian Amnesia
Patrick Leach, MBA, Engagement Leader, Decision Strategies Inc.; and author of Why Can’t You Just Give Me the Number?
“The chance of success (COS) on this prospect is 20%, but if we shoot seismic, we can get it up to about 40%.” Comments like this are common in the upstream energy industry, even among people who have experience in value-of-information analysis. When a direct hydrocarbon indicator is involved, the situation is even worse; many companies completely forget about their previous assessments of the COS for a prospect. The confusion is exacerbated when the new information is expected to yield insights on several uncertainties and/or the company plans to acquire more than one type of information to help with a single uncertainty. In this presentation, Leach will discuss several examples of scenarios like these and explore how some basic (and not-so-basic) Bayesian decision trees can help people see how to revise their uncertainty assessments appropriately in the wake of new data.
3:30pm-4:20pm
Making Product Development (System Design) Decisions with Decision Analysis
Dennis M. Buede, PhD, Executive Vice President, Innovative Decisions, Inc.
The concept that design decisions get made by designers is common in the disciplines of product development and systems engineering. Yet more often than not these decisions are made without any formal analysis, often via an internal satisficing process. When the decision process is formal and explicit, there are many potential pitfalls, some of which are commonly known in the field of decision analysis and some of which are not. Formal decision processes during system design are commonly called trade studies or analyses of alternatives (AoAs). In this session, Kuskey will provide an overview of the process for systems engineering and product development, describe the many kinds of trade studies that are undertaken, relate decision analysis to these trade studies, and discuss complexities of system design about which decision analysts should be aware.
4:30pm-5:20pm
Pharmaceutical Industry Decision Analysis from a Consultant’s Point of View
Homie Razavi, PhD, Senior Partner, Kromite
The pharmaceutical industry is composed of a wide range of companies, including some of the world’s largest. Some have multi-billion dollars of sales from one product, and some are new start-ups funded by venture capitalists and angel investors. When it comes to decision analysis, the needs of these companies vary significantly depending on the company’s familiarity with DA, the availability of internal resources, and the type of problems they face. The implementation of decision analysis recommendations is further complicated by the culture of the company and the personality of senior management. In this talk, Razavi will share his organization’s experience working in pharma: first as practitioners within the industry, and then as outside consultants who support the industry. He will also provide examples of decision analyses that are common in this industry as well as a few that addressed unique problems.
|
