Expert judgment and group decision making: the role of intelligence

Mary Woodcock Kroble
Saturday 10 November 2012
Date: 6 February 2013
Time: 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Speaker: Mark Burgman ( School of Botany, University of Melbourne)

Abstract

Biosecurity risk management is characterised by urgent decisions, large numbers of poorly understood threats and contentious and substantial national and international ramifications. Intelligence is insight that can be used to improve the quality of decisions in this context. It serves a range of activities including risk assessment, reporting to local and international regulators and stakeholders, operational and strategic decision making. While some data sets are extensive, few are complete and most are inadequate or absent entirely. Gaps are filled by expert judgments. This presentation outlines some of the most pervasive and manageable frailties of expert assessments in such contexts. It describes structured protocols that have been developed and tested over the last 5 years to improve the accuracy and calibration of expert judgments of¨C11C facts. It outlines how judgments are supported by data, foresight¨C12C activities and dedicated software designed to search efficiently for¨C13C relevant open-source information. Lastly, the presentation outlines the¨C14C application of methods designed to support biosecurity risk management to¨C15C a project in geopolitical risk assessment sponsored by IARPA, the research¨C16C arm of the US Intelligence Service.

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