Learn to apply the most rigorous method to support decision making and analysis in the absence of adequate data and under uncertainty.

How do you support your decision making when dealing with uncertainty, unprecedented events or lack of adequate data? 

Despite its increased accessibility, data is often insufficient and can therefore impact quantitative assessments regarding future events, risks or opportunities. In this course you will learn to apply a tried and tested tool to use expert opinions to quantify uncertainty.

Any decision or risk analysis can benefit from the use of expert judgement in cases when:

• a decision process is impacted by substantial uncertainty. Validated expert opinions can supplement existing information in projects where the quantification of parameter uncertainty is crucial;
• data is incomplete, uninformative or conflicting. Historical data, used by data-driven models for prediction, is not always sufficiently representative of the problem at hand, especially in highly volatile settings;
• you need to build rational consensus. That is, you acknowledge the diversity of expert opinions and want to use a rigorous method that objectively evaluates and aggregates diverse expert assessments.

Structured Expert Judgement (SEJ)
SEJ provides a transparent and performance-driven approach to using expert opinions in decision-making processes. It gives you an accessible and easy-to-use tool to forecast the uncertainty of specific quantities of interest, enabling you to evaluate and aggregate the uncertainty assessments offered by a pool of experts.

This rigorous and mathematically sound method can be used by any professional interested in supporting the assessment and prediction of risks and opportunities, from portfolio analysts and consultants to risk analysts and managers.

In this course you will learn how to use SEJ in a specific project. You will be able to use your own case and receive personalized support and feedback throughout.

After taking this course you will be able to:

• use SEJ to quantify uncertainty to support your decision making
• design a complete expert judgment process
• carry out a structured protocol during which experts provide their assessments and rationales
• analyse expert data and produce a report of the findings

Proven Methodology

The method taught in this course was developed at TU Delft by Roger Cooke. It has been used by institutions and companies such as NASA, RIVM, WHO, Airbus, Shell and KLM, and a Procedure Guide has been published by the European Commission.

Overall, the SEJ method has been used for over 30 years in areas as diverse as disaster management, epidemiology, public health, safety, aeronautics/aerospace, finance, risk management, climate change, environment, engineering, and many others.

In practice: Predicting electricity prices

Electricity prices are important to suppliers due to their purchase strategy. Portfolio managers buy and sell electricity on the spot market, but they can also buy volumes of the commodity years in advance on the exchange or over the counter.
 

“Forecast models for electricity prices are therefore of great interest to portfolio managers. However, the considerable uncertainty of these models – due to the extreme price volatility caused by the economically non-storable nature of electricity, the constant balance between consumption and production, weather effects and other factors –, presented challenges to predict average day ahead spot prices for 2025, 2030 and 2035. Our strategy was to combine data-driven models with expertise of traders using SEJ to subject the process of soliciting such expert advice to a transparent, traceable and validated methodology.” – Ashni Bachasingh, Electricity Portfolio Analyst