Resources Repository
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BookPublication 2013Making Hard Decisions with Decision Tools, 3rd Edition
Making Hard Decisions with Decision Tools® is a new edition and teaches the fundamental ideas …
Making Hard Decisions with Decision Tools® is a new edition and teaches the fundamental ideas of decision analysis, without an overly technical explanation of the mathematics used in decision analysis. This new version has been purposefully written to be more relevant to students in business and engineering compared to previous versions. This new version also incorporates and implements the powerful DecisionTools® software by Palisade Corporation. At the end of each chapter, topics are illustrated with step-by-step instructions…
Preferences/Values | Microsimulation | Test Performance | Military/Defense | Energy/Engineering | Probability/Bayes | Value of Information | Decision Analysis | Policy/Regulation | Business/Industry | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global | North America | Europe -
ReviewPublication 2015Agent-Based Models and Microsimulation
This article reviews the principles and applications of agent-based models (ABMs). ABMs are computational models …
This article reviews the principles and applications of agent-based models (ABMs). ABMs are computational models used to simulate the actions and interactions of “agents” within a system. Usually, each agent has a set of rules for how he or she responds to the environment and to other agents. These models are used to gain insight into the emergent behavior of complex systems with many agents, in which the emergent behavior depends upon the micro-level behavior…
Microsimulation | State-Transition | Military/Defense | Energy/Engineering | Mathematical Models | Dynamic Simulation | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology -
ReviewPublication 2016Decision Support for Infectious Disease Control
This report from RAND reviews decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, that are relevant to …
This report from RAND reviews decision-support tools, including models and nonmodeling approaches, that are relevant to infectious disease prevention, detection, and response and aligns these tools with real-world policy questions that the tools can help address. This overview is designed to help modelers and other technical experts understand the questions that policymakers will raise and the decisions they must make. The report also presents policymakers with the capabilities and limitations of the different tools that may…
Microsimulation | Dynamic Transmission | State-Transition | Military/Defense | Mathematical Models | Dynamic Simulation | Infectious Diseases | Global Governance | Government/Law | Health/Medicine | Global -
ReportPublication 2021What It Means to Be a Science-Literate Citizen in a Digital World
Science literacy is often held up as crucial for avoiding science-related misinformation and enabling more …
Science literacy is often held up as crucial for avoiding science-related misinformation and enabling more informed individual and collective decision-making. But research has not yet examined whether science literacy actually enables this, nor what skills it would need to encompass to do so. This report addresses three questions to outline what it should mean to be science literate in today’s world: (1) How should we conceptualize science literacy? (2) How can we achieve this science…
Preferences/Values | Energy/Engineering | Education/Labor | Decision Psychology | Social Determinants | Culture/Society | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Global | North America -
ArticlePublication 2021Misinformation and Public Opinion of Science and Health
This article summarizes the literature on misinformation, beginning with an overview of the most common …
This article summarizes the literature on misinformation, beginning with an overview of the most common definitions of misinformation (and related terms) in the communication literature and then a review of academic studies in the areas of science and health. The author acknowledges four overarching questions that have emerged prominently in recent years: (1) What does “misinformation” (and the terms that are oftentimes treated synonymously) mean? (2) How big of a problem is it in areas…
Preferences/Values | Energy/Engineering | Education/Labor | Decision Psychology | Social Determinants | Climate/Environment | Culture/Society | Science/Technology | Global | North America -
ReportPublication 2017Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda
Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, …
Science and technology are embedded in virtually every aspect of modern life. As a result, people face an increasing need to integrate information from science with their personal values and other considerations as they make important life decisions about medical care, the safety of foods, what to do about climate change, and many other issues. Communicating science effectively, however, is a complex task and an acquired skill. Moreover, the approaches to communicating science that will…
Preferences/Values | Energy/Engineering | Education/Labor | Decision Psychology | Priority Setting/Ethics | Social Determinants | Climate/Environment | Culture/Society | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | North America -
ArticlePublication 2017Reduced Burden of Childhood Diarrheal Diseases through Increased Access to Water and Sanitation in India: Modeling Analysis
This analysis estimates the health and economic benefits of scaling up the coverage of piped …
This analysis estimates the health and economic benefits of scaling up the coverage of piped water and improved sanitation to a near-universal 95% level among Indian households. The authors used an agent-based microsimulation platform, IndiaSim, to model disease progression and individual healthcare-seeking behavior in India, and use ECEA to estimate health and economic outcomes over time. They found that scaling up access to piped water and improved sanitation could avert 43,352 diarrheal episodes and 68…
Microsimulation | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Energy/Engineering | Priority Setting/Ethics | Costing Methods | Health Outcomes | Child/Nutrition | Social Determinants | Environmental Health | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | Science/Technology | Asia & Pacific -
ReviewPublication 2016Remembering Howard Raiffa
Howard Raiffa (1924-2016) had a profound influence on all aspects of the decision sciences and on …
Howard Raiffa (1924-2016) had a profound influence on all aspects of the decision sciences and on the fields of systems analysis and operations research. He guided the introduction of the decision sciences into numerous fields such as business, medicine, public health, the environmental sciences, and law, and was instrumental in building world-recognized institutions such as the Kennedy School at Harvard and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis near Vienna, Austria. This article is a thoughtful tribute by…
Preferences/Values | Operations Research | Military/Defense | Decision Theory | Decision Analysis | Business/Industry | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine | North America -
ArticlePublication 2015Broader Economic Impact of Vaccination: Reviewing and Appraising the Strength of Evidence
Economic evaluations of public health programs such as immunization often consider only direct health benefits and …
Economic evaluations of public health programs such as immunization often consider only direct health benefits and medical cost savings. Evidence linking immunization to important benefits in indicators such as childhood development, household behavior, and other macro-economic data are unclear. A conceptual framework of the pathways between immunization and these broader economic benefits was developed through expert consultation. The authors obtained articles from previous reviews, snowballing, and expert consultation, and associated them with one of the pathways and assessed them using modified Grading…
Preferences/Values | Cost-Effectiveness Analysis | Education/Labor | Priority Setting/Ethics | Costing Methods | Evidence Synthesis | Benefit-Cost Analysis | Infectious Diseases | Social Determinants | Economics/Finance | Health/Medicine