Video Excerpt

GEORGE
Planning under uncertainty. This, I feel, is the real field that we should be all working in.

IRV
Wasn't that always your interest from the very beginning? I think we've made good progress. But our ability to solve uncertainty problems is still in its infancy.

GEORGE
Correct. Those of us who were doing the planning right from the very beginning understood that the real problem was to be able to do planning under uncertainty. The mathematical models that we put together act like we have a precise knowledge about the various things that are happening and we don't. So we need to have plans that actually hedge against these various uncertainties.

IRV
There's been a lot of progress, especially over the past ten years, within the research community on planning under uncertainty. What would you say are barriers stopping it from being more widely used in practice?

GEORGE
Lack of understanding by the planning community and the scientific community of how much better off the world and our country would be if planning under uncertainty models were more widely applied. One day we are paying low, low rates for electricity and the next thing you know it becomes short. My bill for utilities, which used to be around two or three hundred dollars, is now eight hundred dollars overnight. It just goes through the sky. A lot of things which they call globalization to me look very, very dangerous from the point of view of just protecting the country.

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