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Issue No. 20 Spring 2002
_____________________________________________________________________
A
newsletter reporting the activities of the faculty, students
and graduates of the Department of Engineering and Public
Policy in the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon.
_____________________________________________________________________ |
Workshop
Stimulates Several Efforts to
Improve
S&T Advice to Congress
The
past year has witnessed a number of efforts to develop
new institutional arrangements to provide improved science
and technology advice to the U.S. Congress. Most of these
activities have been stimulated by a workshop organized
by Granger Morgan (EPP/ECE/Heinz) and Jon Peha (EPP/ECE),
and co-convened by 17 other leading research universities
and professional societies, which was held in Washington,
DC last summer. Details on the workshop, which was supported
by The Heinz Endowments and The MacArthur Foundation,
can be found at http://www.epp.cmu.edu/other/
STadvice_toC.html.
Three related
pieces of legislation have been introduced in the Congress.
First, an appropriation of $500,000 was made to the General
Accounting Office, as part of the Legislative Appropriations
Act. This funding has supported GAO to conduct an assessment
of technology for personal identification in border control.
While the experimental assessment effort is being performed
by GAO, the National Research Council has assisted by
convening two workshops in which experts and stakeholders
explored technical and policy issues. The assessment is
due to be completed late this summer.
Second, the
Energy Policy Act of 2002 (S.1766), which passed in the
Senate this spring, contains language that would create
a National Science and Technology Assessment Service.
The function of the Service would be to "coordinate and
develop information for Congress relating to the uses
and application of technology to address current national
science
S&T
Advice - continued on pg. 12
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Electricity
Industry Center Created as Joint Effort by EPP and GSIA
The Sloan Foundation
and EPRI have awarded a $1.75 million grant to Carnegie
Mellon University to establish the "Carnegie Mellon Electricity
Industry Center," or CEIC (pronounced "seek"). The Center
is jointly housed in the Department of Engineering and Public
Policy (EPP) and the Graduate School of Industrial Administration
(GSIA) and is co-directed by Lester Lave (GSIA EPP/Heinz)
and Granger Morgan (EPP/ECE/Heinz). CEIC Executive Director
Alex Farrell explains that the goal of CEIC is "to work
with all the key players to make the electricity industry
more competitive and its systems more reliable and secure,
to create wealth, and better serve the public interest."
A key factor in the choice of Carnegie Mellon to host the
new Center was the strong record in rigorous interdisciplinary
research, especially at EPP.
CEIC has embarked
on an extensive program of education and research. Ongoing
restructuring has forced much of the electric power industry
to focus on very short-term tactical concerns. CEIC has
chosen to focus on more strategic issues and in particular
on issues where technical, economic, and policy issues are
intertwined. A good example is in the area of security -
intersections of policy and technology abound. In November
of 2001, CEIC organized a workshop on this topic for people
from government, industry, and academia (see story on page
4).
Research topics
being addressed range from economic and regulatory assessments
of emerging technologies such as distributed generation
to technologies and policies for
CEIC
- continued on pg. 3
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| Risk
Communication Book Provides User's Guide to Mental
Model Methods |
| Cambridge
University Press has just published Risk Communication:
A mental model approach, co-authored by Granger Morgan
(EPP/ECE/Heinz), Baruch Fischhoff (SDS/EPP), Ann Bostrom
(Heinz Ph.D. 1990, now an Associate Professor at Georgia
Tech), and Cynthia Atman (EPP Ph.D. 1990, now an Associate
Professor at the University of Washington). The book
presents the mental-model approach to risk communication
developed at Carnegie Mellon over the course of the
past decade. |
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| The
book lays out a systematic approach for risk communicators
and technical experts hoping to serve the public with
information about risk. The procedure uses approaches
from risk and decision analysis to identify the most
relevant information; it also uses approaches from psychology
and communication theory to ensure that the messages
will be understood. The book is written in non-technical
terms, designed to make the approach feasible for anyone
willing to try it. It is illustrated with many practical
examples drawn from successful communications on a variety
of topics. |
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