This year we were delighted to welcome Chris Dent who is Professor of Industrial Mathematics in the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute. as our guest speaker.
Lessons for decision analysis from controversial infrastructure case studies.
In this talk Prof. Dent will consider and discuss two highly topical and controversial infrastructure projects namely HS2 and energy security relating this back to lessons for decision analysis.
At a technical level, a key theme will be the need for coordinated design of system modelling, uncertainty treatment and use in decision support, with the goal of improved decision making in the real world (as opposed to optimal decision making in the world of the model, which is of indirect relevant to most applied questions!) However equally important here are organisational issues such as there being sufficient resource and deliberation at a strategic planning stage, and the need to align design of analysis with the decision
Chris Dent has the unusual dual status of being an academic in a Maths School and Fellow of the OR Society, plus also a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology. His research interests lie broadly across model and data-based decision support in energy, infrastructure and government. In addition to his research work, he also has long experience of working on projects with industry, including supporting National Grid ESO on analysis underpinning the electricity capacity market, being Technical Lead on the National Digital Twin programme Climate Resilience Demonstrator, and a current knowledge exchange project with the Global Power System Transformation consortium funded by the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences in Edinburgh.