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Ho Chi Minh City faces significant and growing flood risk. Recent risk reduction efforts may be insufficient as climate and socio-economic conditions diverge from projections made when those efforts were initially planned. This study demonstrates how robust decision making can help Ho Chi Minh City develop integrated flood risk management strategies in the face of such deep uncertainty. Robust decision making is an iterative, quantitative, decision support methodology designed to help policy makers identify strategies that are robust, that is, satisfying decision makers' objectives in many plausible futures, rather than being optimal in any single estimate of the future. This project used robust decision making to analyze flood risk management in Ho Chi Minh City's Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe canal catchment area. It found that the soon-to-be-completed infrastructure may reduce risk in best estimates of future conditions, but it may not keep risk low in many other plausible futures. Thus, the infrastructure may not be sufficiently robust. The analysis further suggests that adaptation and retreat measures, particularly when used adaptively, can play an important role in reducing this risk. The study examines the conditions under which robust decision making concepts and full robust decision making analyses may prove useful in developing countries. It finds that planning efforts in developing countries should at minimum use models and data to evaluate their decisions under a wide range of conditions. Full robust decision making analyses can also augment existing planning efforts in numerous ways.

Adaptation --- Climate change --- Decision-making under uncertainty --- Flood risk management --- Long-lived infrastructure investments --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth

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Policy makers bemoan the lack of research findings to guide urgent decisions, whereas researchers' professional code puts rigor first. This article argues that provisional assessments, produced early in the research cycle, can bridge the gap. Numerous case studies point to the importance of early interaction with policy makers and the delivery of brief, policy-focused papers; but preliminary analyses may be flawed and so increase the chances of a wrong decision. This article emonstrates analytically that a preliminary assessment, supported by the offer of more refined research, provides an option that is superior, on average, to the current practice of submitting a final report at the end of the research cycle. Where practical implementation is concerned, it calls for donor-funded subsidies to promote the use of provisional assessments and for a rapid, independent, professional review process to ensure their quality. While the research-policy exchange in developing countries is a complex, context-specific phenomenon, the proposal offered here holds out some promise of improving decisions in the public sphere under a wide range of circumstances.

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty. --- Developing Countries. --- Education. --- Health, Nutrition and Population. --- Policy Research. --- Population Policies. --- Research-Policy Dialogue. --- Rigor-Timeliness Trade-Off. --- Science and Technology Development. --- Science Education. --- Scientific Research and Science Parks. --- Tertiary Education.

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Investment decision making is already difficult for any diverse group of actors with different priorities and views. But the presence of deep uncertainties linked to climate change and other future conditions further challenges decision making by questioning the robustness of all purportedly optimal solutions. While decision makers can continue to use the decision metrics they have used in the past (such as net present value), alternative methodologies can improve decision processes, especially those that lead with analysis and end in agreement on decisions. Such "Agree-on-Decision" methods start by stress-testing options under a wide range of plausible conditions, without requiring us to agree ex ante on which conditions are more or less likely, and against a set of objectives or success metrics, without requiring us to agree ex ante on how to aggregate or weight them. As a result, these methods are easier to apply to contexts of large uncertainty or disagreement on values and objectives. This inverted process promotes consensus around better decisions and can help in managing uncertainty. Analyses performed in this way let decision makers make the decision and inform them on (1) the conditions under which an option or project is vulnerable; (2) the tradeoffs between robustness and cost, or between various objectives; and (3) the flexibility of various options to respond to changes in the future. In doing so, they put decision makers back in the driver's seat. A growing set of case studies shows that these methods can be applied in real-world contexts and do not need to be more costly or complicated than traditional approaches. Finally, while this paper focuses on climate change, a better treatment of uncertainties and disagreement would in general improve decision making and development outcomes.

Adaptation --- Climate Change --- Climate Change Economics --- Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases --- Debt Markets --- Decision-Making Under Uncertainty --- Environment --- Finance and Financial Sector Development --- Investment --- Macroeconomics and Economic Growth --- Science and Technology Development --- Science of Climate Change --- Transport --- Transport Economics Policy and Planning

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At present, the impact of distributed energy resources in the operation of power and energy systems is unquestionable at the distribution level, but also at the whole power system management level. Increased flexibility is required to accommodate intermittent distributed generation and electric vehicle charging. Demand response has already been proven to have a great potential to contribute to an increased system efficiency while bringing additional benefits, especially to the consumers. Distributed storage is also promising, e.g., when jointly used with the currently increasing use of photovoltaic panels. This book addresses the management of distributed energy resources. The focus includes methods and techniques to achieve an optimized operation, to aggregate the resources, namely, by virtual power players, and to remunerate them. The integration of distributed resources in electricity markets is also addressed as a main drive for their efficient use.

autonomous operation --- energy management system --- stochastic programming --- co-generation --- Unit Commitment (UC) --- distributed system --- demand-side energy management --- virtual power plant --- Powell direction acceleration method --- average consensus algorithm (ACA) --- transmission line --- interval optimization --- renewable energy --- microgrids --- scheduling --- business model --- non-cooperative game (NCG) --- domestic energy management system --- time series --- energy trading --- decision-making under uncertainty --- Demand Response Unit Commitment (DRUC) --- real-time simulation --- distributed generation --- discrete wavelet transformer --- microgrid (MG) --- probabilistic programming --- optimal bidding --- ac/dc hybrid microgrid --- building energy flexibility --- storage --- uncertainty --- Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO) --- advance and retreat method --- multiplier method --- microgrid --- Demand Response (DR) --- electricity markets --- aggregators --- fault localization --- aggregator --- consensus algorithm --- black start --- microgrid operation --- local controller --- thermal comfort --- diffusion strategy --- optimal operation --- power system restoration (PSR) --- energy flexibility --- ARIMA --- pricing strategy --- clustering --- adaptive droop control --- multi-agent system (MAS) --- hierarchical game --- energy flexibility potential --- demand response

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At present, the impact of distributed energy resources in the operation of power and energy systems is unquestionable at the distribution level, but also at the whole power system management level. Increased flexibility is required to accommodate intermittent distributed generation and electric vehicle charging. Demand response has already been proven to have a great potential to contribute to an increased system efficiency while bringing additional benefits, especially to the consumers. Distributed storage is also promising, e.g., when jointly used with the currently increasing use of photovoltaic panels. This book addresses the management of distributed energy resources. The focus includes methods and techniques to achieve an optimized operation, to aggregate the resources, namely, by virtual power players, and to remunerate them. The integration of distributed resources in electricity markets is also addressed as a main drive for their efficient use.

autonomous operation --- energy management system --- stochastic programming --- co-generation --- Unit Commitment (UC) --- distributed system --- demand-side energy management --- virtual power plant --- Powell direction acceleration method --- average consensus algorithm (ACA) --- transmission line --- interval optimization --- renewable energy --- microgrids --- scheduling --- business model --- non-cooperative game (NCG) --- domestic energy management system --- time series --- energy trading --- decision-making under uncertainty --- Demand Response Unit Commitment (DRUC) --- real-time simulation --- distributed generation --- discrete wavelet transformer --- microgrid (MG) --- probabilistic programming --- optimal bidding --- ac/dc hybrid microgrid --- building energy flexibility --- storage --- uncertainty --- Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO) --- advance and retreat method --- multiplier method --- microgrid --- Demand Response (DR) --- electricity markets --- aggregators --- fault localization --- aggregator --- consensus algorithm --- black start --- microgrid operation --- local controller --- thermal comfort --- diffusion strategy --- optimal operation --- power system restoration (PSR) --- energy flexibility --- ARIMA --- pricing strategy --- clustering --- adaptive droop control --- multi-agent system (MAS) --- hierarchical game --- energy flexibility potential --- demand response --- autonomous operation --- energy management system --- stochastic programming --- co-generation --- Unit Commitment (UC) --- distributed system --- demand-side energy management --- virtual power plant --- Powell direction acceleration method --- average consensus algorithm (ACA) --- transmission line --- interval optimization --- renewable energy --- microgrids --- scheduling --- business model --- non-cooperative game (NCG) --- domestic energy management system --- time series --- energy trading --- decision-making under uncertainty --- Demand Response Unit Commitment (DRUC) --- real-time simulation --- distributed generation --- discrete wavelet transformer --- microgrid (MG) --- probabilistic programming --- optimal bidding --- ac/dc hybrid microgrid --- building energy flexibility --- storage --- uncertainty --- Cat Swarm Optimization (CSO) --- advance and retreat method --- multiplier method --- microgrid --- Demand Response (DR) --- electricity markets --- aggregators --- fault localization --- aggregator --- consensus algorithm --- black start --- microgrid operation --- local controller --- thermal comfort --- diffusion strategy --- optimal operation --- power system restoration (PSR) --- energy flexibility --- ARIMA --- pricing strategy --- clustering --- adaptive droop control --- multi-agent system (MAS) --- hierarchical game --- energy flexibility potential --- demand response