David G Groves

RAND evaluated potential effects of uncertain projections of demand and climate change on the ability of the Jinan Municipal Water Resources Bureau to meet its long-term water resources goals. This document describes RAND's approach and results, including development of a mathematical simulation model of the Jinan water supply system and analysis of the system's performance if new strategies and investments were to be implemented.

Based on the premise that investing in hazard risk mitigation will reduce spending on recovery and response, the federal Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program recognizes that equity issues are important in helping communities? mitigation efforts. Researchers identified ways to address these issues while enhancing the accuracy of natural hazard assessment in future BRIC grant decisionmaking, as described in this report.

Florida's Miami-Dade and Broward counties are vulnerable to flooding and intrusion of saltwater into drinking water wells as a consequence of sea level rise, changes in precipitation, and the distribution of future asset growth across the region. The authors developed an integrated groundwater and economic model and decision support tool to help regional planners and decisionmakers focus mitigation actions on the most vulnerable areas.

How safe should highly automated vehicles (HAVs) be before they are allowed on the roads for consumer use? In this report, RAND researchers use the RAND Model of Automated Vehicle Safety to compare road fatalities over time under a policy that allows HAVs to be deployed when their safety performance is just moderately better than human drivers and a policy that waits to deploy HAVs only once their performance is nearly perfect.

This report highlights RAND s contributions to the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority s Master Plan. Its purpose is to help policymakers in other coastal regions understand the value of a solid technical foundation to support decision-making on strategies to reduce flood risk, rebuild or restore coastal environments, and increase the resilience of developed coastal regions."

The 2012 Colorado River Basin Study evaluated the resiliency of the Colorado River system over the next 50 years to climate change and other factors, and then compared different options and strategies for ensuring successful management of the river s resources. This report describes RAND s contribution to this study. It focuses on the Robust Decision Making methodologies used to identify vulnerabilities and compare portfolios of options."

This report presents an economic framework for estimating a water agency's avoided costs and environmental benefits of increasing water-use efficiency. The report demonstrates this framework by evaluating the benefits of Denver Water's efficiency programs and utilizes an exploratory modeling approach to accommodate significant uncertainty. The analysis highlights the importance of considering both long- and short-run costs and benefits.