An Approach to Risk and Uncertainty in Benefit-Cost Analysis of Water Resources Projects

摘要

This heightened awareness of the role of risk and uncertainty in water resources planning motivated the work reported in this paper. Specifically, we have three objectives: (1) to raise some issues and concerns about the possible impacts of risk and uncertainty considerations on the preparation and documentation of feasibility studies, the development of alternative plans, the complexity of the decision-making process, and the time required for that process to evolve, (2) to identify sources of risk and uncertainity in water resources planning, (3) to investigate the computational requirements of a probabilistic approach to benefit-cost analysis, as well as its potential usefulness (or lack of it) in the evaluation of alternative projects.