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Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks

By Bilal M. Ayyub

Published June 27th 2001 by CRC Press – 328 pages

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Description

Experts, despite their importance and value, can be double-edged swords. They can make valuable contributions from their deep base of knowledge, but those contributions may also contain their own biases and pet theories. Therefore, selecting experts, eliciting their opinions, and aggregating their opinions must be performed and handled carefully, with full recognition of the uncertainties inherent in those opinions.

Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks illuminates those uncertainties and builds a foundation of philosophy, background, methods, and guidelines that helps its readers effectively execute the elicitation process. Based on the first-hand experiences of the author, the book is filled with illustrations, examples, case studies, and applications that demonstrate not only the methods and successes of expert opinion elicitation, but also its pitfalls and failures.

Studies show that in the future, analysts, engineers, and scientists will need to solve ever more complex problems and reach decisions with limited resources. This will lead to an increased reliance on the proper treatment of uncertainty and on the use of expert opinions. Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks will help prepare you to better understand knowledge and ignorance, to successfully elicit expert opinions, to select appropriate expressions of those opinions, and to use various methods to model and aggregate opinions.

Contents

Knowledge and Ignorance

Information Abundance and Ignorance

The Nature of Knowledge

Cognition and Cognitive Science

Time and its Asymmetry

Defining Ignorance in the Context of Knowledge

Exercise Problems

Information-Based System Definition

Introduction

System Definition Models

Hierarchical Definitions of Systems

Models for Ignorance and Uncertainty Types

Systems Complexity

Exercise Problems

Experts, Opinions, and Elicitation Methods

Introduction

Experts, and Expert Opinions

Historical Background

Scientific Heuristics

Rational Consensus

Elicitation Methods

Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing

Methods of Social Research

Focus Groups

Exercise Problems

Expressing and Modeling Expert Opinions

Introduction

Set Theory

Monotone Measures

Exercise Problems

Consensus and Aggregating Expert Opinions

Introduction

Methods of Scoring of Expert Opinions

Uncertainty Measures

Combining Expert Opinions

Exercise Problems

Guidance on Expert-Opinion Elicitation

Introduction and Terminology

Classification of Issues, Study Levels, Experts, and Process Outcomes

Process Definition

Need Identification for Expert-Opinion Elicitation

Selection of Study Level and Study Leader

Selection of Peer Reviewers and Experts

Identification, Selection, and Development of Technical Issues

Elicitation of Opinions

Documentation and Communication

Exercise Problems

Applications of Expert-Opinion Elicitation

Introduction

Assessment of Occurrence Probabilities

Economic Consequences of Floods

References

Indexes

Name: Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks (Hardback) – CRC Press 
Description: By Bilal M. Ayyub. Experts, despite their importance and value, can be double-edged swords. They can make valuable contributions from their deep base of knowledge, but those contributions may also contain their own biases and pet theories. Therefore, selecting experts,...
Categories: Industrial Engineering & Manufacturing, Operations Research, Engineering & Technology