Uncertainty management in integrated assessment modeling: Towards a pluralistic approach

Integrated Assessment (IA) is an evolving research community that aims to a ddress complex societal issues through an interdisciplinary process. The mo st-widely used method in Integrated Assessment is modeling. The state of th e art in Integrated Assessment modeling is described in this paper in terms of history, general features, classes of models, and in terms of the stren gths and weaknesses, and the dilemmas and challenges modelers face. One of the key challenges is the issue of uncertainty management. The paper outlin es the sources and types of uncertainty modelers are confronted with. It th en discusses how uncertainties are currently managed in Integrated Assessme nt modeling, on which evaluation it is argued that complementary methods ar e needed that allow for pluralistic uncertainty management. The paper final ises with discussing pluralistic concepts and approaches that are currently explored in the IA community and that seem promising in view of the challe nge to incorporate explicitly more than one hidden perspective in models.