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Expert Judgement for Geological Hazards in New Zealand

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Expert Judgement in Risk and Decision Analysis

Part of the book series: International Series in Operations Research & Management Science ((ISOR,volume 293))

Abstract

Expert judgement is important for the short- and long-term assessments of natural hazards in New Zealand, contributing to their risk analyses and informing decision-making. The problems are complex and usually require input from experts from different sub-disciplines. Expert judgement, like all human cognitive processes, is prone to biases. Therefore, we aim to use methods that are robust, transparent, reproducible and help reduce biases. The Classical Model treats expert opinion as scientific data and its performance-based weighting of experts allows us to measure the uncertainty of a quantifiable problem. We have developed a protocol for risk assessment, including structured expert judgement, which is centred around workshop-style interactions between experts to share knowledge. The protocol borrows heavily from the framework for the risk management process of the International Organization for Standardization. We outline seven recent applications of structured judgement, mostly in seismology and volcanology. Most of them use the Classical Model to aggregate the expert judgement. We discuss challenges and insights, concluding that developing an optimal protocol for expert judgement is a continuing journey.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledgement Roger Cooke and Willy Aspinall for their support and encouragement in applying the Classical Model. We thank all of the experts who took part in different projects. David Rhoades and Anca Hanea reviewed the manuscript before submission. Annemarie Christophersen thanks Anca Hanea for many lively and educational discussions, and acknowledges a travel grant by the Royal Society of New Zealand to attend the workshop on “Science, uncertainty and decision-making in the mitigation of natural risk” of the European Union funded COST Action “Expert Judgment Network: Bridging the Gap Between Scientific Uncertainty and Evidence-Based Decision Making”.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. GNS Science, 1 Fairway Drive, Avalon, New Zealand

    Annemarie Christophersen & Matthew C. Gerstenberger

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  1. Annemarie Christophersen
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  2. Matthew C. Gerstenberger
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Correspondence to Annemarie Christophersen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center of Excellence for Biosecurity Risk Analysis (CEBRA), University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Anca M. Hanea

  2. Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics, Delft University of Technology, Delft, The Netherlands

    Gabriela F. Nane

  3. Department of Management Science, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

    Tim Bedford

  4. Department of Statistics, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Simon French

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Christophersen, A., Gerstenberger, M.C. (2021). Expert Judgement for Geological Hazards in New Zealand. In: Hanea, A.M., Nane, G.F., Bedford, T., French, S. (eds) Expert Judgement in Risk and Decision Analysis. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 293. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46474-5_15

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