Engineering and Deep Uncertainty

The term "deep uncertainty" could be very important to engineering in the near future.  I recently ran across the term in the context of climate change in a World Bank report (Investment Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty). 

When dealing with climate change, engineers are faced with uncertainty that's difficult or impossible to quantify.  The best the engineering community might be able to plan on is to develop climate change strategies that's robust to unknowns, rather than one that tries to optimize outcomes.

Climate change produces at least two sets of big unknowns for engineers.  The first is the climate itself - - how much damage will climate change cause?  The second set of unknowns surrounds the relationship between public policy and the energy system.  When looking at these two unknowns independent of each other, you can see the uncertainty.  A much more complex problem is the linkage and connections between these two big unknowns.  The two sets of unknowns interface with each other over a broad range of critical issues.  This is the world of deep uncertainty that engineering will have to come to grips with - - quickly.

See more at this excellent post.