science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...

, and

research Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

, expert elicitation is the synthesis of opinions of authorities of a subject where there is uncertainty due to insufficient

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...

or when such data is unattainable because of physical constraints or lack of resources. Expert elicitation is essentially a scientific consensus

methodology In its most common sense, methodology is the study of research methods. However, the term can also refer to the methods themselves or to the philosophical discussion of associated background assumptions. A method is a structured procedure for br ...

. It is often used in the study of rare events. Expert elicitation allows for parametrization, an "educated guess", for the respective topic under study. Expert elicitation generally quantifies

uncertainty Uncertainty refers to epistemic situations involving imperfect or unknown information. It applies to predictions of future events, to physical measurements that are already made, or to the unknown. Uncertainty arises in partially observable ...

. Expert elicitation tends to be

multidisciplinary Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity (e.g., a research project). It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, ec ...

as well as interdisciplinary, with practically universal applicability, and is used in a broad range of fields. Prominent recent expert elicitation applications include

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

modeling A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

seismic hazard A seismic hazard is the probability that an earthquake will occur in a given geographic area, within a given window of time, and with ground motion intensity exceeding a given threshold. With a hazard thus estimated, risk can be assessed and incl ...

and damage, association of tornado damage to

wind speed In meteorology, wind speed, or wind flow speed, is a fundamental atmospheric quantity caused by air moving from high to low pressure, usually due to changes in temperature. Wind speed is now commonly measured with an anemometer. Wind speed ...

in developing the

Enhanced Fujita scale The Enhanced Fujita scale (abbreviated as EF-Scale) rates tornado intensity based on the severity of the damage they cause. It is used in some countries, including the United States, Canada, China, and Mongolia. The Enhanced Fujita scale repl ...

, risk analysis for

nuclear waste Radioactive waste is a type of hazardous waste that contains radioactive material. Radioactive waste is a result of many activities, including nuclear medicine, nuclear research, nuclear power generation, rare-earth mining, and nuclear weapons ...

storage. In performing expert elicitation certain factors need to be taken into consideration. The topic must be one for which there are people who have predictive expertise. Furthermore, the objective should be to obtain an experts' carefully considered judgment based on a systematic consideration of all relevant evidence. For this reason one should take care to adopt strategies designed to help the expert being interviewed to avoid overlooking relevant evidence. Additionally, vocabulary used should face intense scrutiny; qualitative uncertainty words such as "likely" and "unlikely" are not sufficient and can lead to confusion. Such words can mean very different things to different people, or to the same people in different situations.

References

Bibliography

* Apostolakis, G., 7 December 1990: The concept of probability in safety assessments of technological systems. ''

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

'', 250 (4986): 1359–1364. * Arkes, Hal R., Jeryl L. Mumpower, and Thomas R. Stewart, 24 January 1997: Combining Expert Opinions. ''

'', 275: 461–465. * Boissonnade, A., Hossain, Q., Kimbell, J., Mensing, R., and Savy, J., 2000: Development of a probabilistic tornado wind hazard model for the Continental United States, UCRL-ID-140922 Vol. I, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 131pp. * * Kerr, Richard A., 8 November 1996: Risk Assessment: A New Way to Ask the Experts: Rating Radioactive Waste Risks. ''

'', 274 (5289): 913–914. * SSHAC, 1997: Recommendations for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis: guidelines on uncertainty and use of experts, NUREG/CR-6372, UCRL-ID-122160, Vol. I, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA, 131 pp. Scientific method {{sci-stub

See also

References

Bibliography