ABSTRACT
Environmental decision-making has long been plagued by uncertainties and incomplete information. Historically, governments, companies, communities, and individuals have lacked the data necessary for thoughtful and systematic action to minimize pollution harms and to optimize the use of natural resources. As a result, choices were made on the basis of generalized observations, average exposures, and best guesses – or worse yet, rhetoric and emotion. But breakthroughs in information technologies now permit a much more careful, quantitative, granular, empirically grounded, and systematic approach to pollution control and natural resource management. This chapter explores why and how better and cheaper data and greater emphasis on statistical analysis promise to strengthen environmental policy-making.
