Opening the ConVOI academic year: the Expected Value of Causal Ambiguity

I was invited by Anna Heath to open the new academic year of ConVOI, the Collaborative Network for Value of Information, with a talk on Decision-Making under complexity and uncertainty: Causal Ambiguity in Ethnoecology Research.

I presented my work on the Expected Value of Causal Ambiguity: what is at stake when stakeholders work from different causal models of the same system, as with a road decision in a Hmong community in Laos.

The group knows value of information inside out. Within 45 minutes they linked the problem to structural uncertainty analysis, causal discovery, model averaging, multi-criteria decision analysis, Pareto-based value of information and tipping-point analysis. I came away with sharper questions, a clearer view of where the idea sits in existing work, and some promising directions to develop together.

Thank you to everyone who took part for being so generous with your time and so constructively critical. I look forward to continuing the conversation.