ENGINEERING DESIGN AND UNCERTAINTIES RELATED TO CLIMATE-CHANGE

To explore how uncertain climate events might affect investment decisi ons that need to be made in the near future, this paper examines (1) t he relative magnitude of the uncertainties arising from climate change on engineering design in water resources planning and (2) a restricte d set of water resource planning techniques that deal with the repeate d choice of investment decisions over time. The classical capacity-exp ansion model of operations research is exploited to show the relative impacts upon engineering design choices for variations in future deman d attributable to changes in the climate or other factors and the poss ible shortfall of supply due to climate change. The type of engineerin g decisions considered in the paper are sequential, enabling adjustmen ts to revealed uncertainty in subsequent decisions. The range of possi ble impacts analyzed in the paper lead to similar engineering design d ecisions. This result means that engineers must be on their guard with respect to under-design or over-design of systems with and without th e threat of climate change, but that the sequential nature of the deci sion-making does not call for drastic action in the early time periods . Key Words: Water, Engineering, Design and Climate Change.