A Primer on Decision Making with Uncertainty

From 4th April 2020 I became involved in the Royal Society DELVE Initiative. The following piece was co-written with other DELVE members (but in personal capacities) as an aide to understanding the different nature of policy decision making that’s required when there is uncertainty about the science. It was originally written in April, but published on Peter Diggles web page at end of August.

The current coronavirus epidemic has broad to very public attention the frequent need for policy decisions, most dramatically the announcement of the UK government’s lockdown restrictions on 23 March 2020, to be made quickly, and on the basis of incomplete information.

The government and the general public receive scientific advice related to the coronavirus from a range of sources. One of these is the Royal Society’s DELVE initiative, whose particular focus on data-driven methods (as opposed to modelling, which provides another very important perspective). An immediate difficulty with providing such advice is that there is a great deal that we do not know about the virus and how it is transmitted, and the kind of information we would like takes a long time to obtain, especially if one wishes