Elicitation of Expert Opinions for Uncertainty and Risks / Edition 1

by Bilal M. Ayyub

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780849310874
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/27/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Knowledge and Ignorance. Information-Based System Definition. Experts, Opinions, and Elicitation Methods. Expressing and Modeling Expert Opinions. Consensus and Aggregating Expert Opinions. Guidance on Expert-Opinion Elicitation. Applications of Expert-Opinion Elicitation.

Editorial Reviews

A textbook for a course or for self-learning to teach future and practicing analysts, engineers, and scientists the fundamentals of knowledge and ignorance, how to elicit expert opinions, how to select appropriate expressions of these opinions, and how to aggregate the opinions. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR