The U.S. Climate Change Science Program released a report on Monday titled, “Uses and Limitations of Observations, Data, Forecasts, and Other Projections in Decision Support for Selected Sectors and Regions.” The report focused on computer-based decision support tools, and their effectiveness in making predictions and forecasts for agricultural productivity, air quality, renewable energy resources, water management, and the prevention of vector-borne disease.

The study looked at five systems for in-depth review:

  1. The Department of Agriculture’s, Production Estimate and Crop Assessment Division (PECAD) and its Crop Condition Data Retrieval and Evaluation (CADRE) system. The system has been running for twenty years and relies heavily on remote sensing data to evaluate worldwide agriculture productivity.
  2. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ)
    modeling system for continental/regional/urban-scale air quality.
  3. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Hybrid Optimization Model for Electric Renewables (HOMER). HOMER is used around the world to optimize deployment of
    renewable energy technologies.
  4. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Decision-Support System to Prevent Lyme Disease (DDSPL).
  5. RiverWare, a system developed collaboratively for the Bureau of Reclamation, Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Army Corps of Engineers. RiverWare is a hydrologic modeling system that integrates features of reservoir systems for management and electric utility forecasting and scheduling.

The report specifically was meant to explore the limitation of these systems. One major challenge that was identified was the management of uncertainty regarding system results. The tools that were investigated were found to adequately consider uncertainty and to communicate that uncerainty to users. Another limitation that was identified was the lack of available data on the ground in areas of strong interest. The renewable energy application was particularly of interest in this regard, for instance wind sensor located on the ground to take long-term measurements of specific site characteristics. Overall, these systems are hampered by their short period of use and the lack of reliable and widely distributed sensors. Another finding of the report is that these systems have not adequately considered the pressures of climate change in their forecasts.

The report specifically identifies the systems that were deemed important for societal benefit by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) in the effort to build the Global Earth Observation System of Systems.

The full report can be downloaded at: http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap5-1/final-report/default.htm

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