Modeling Sea Level Rise
Overview
This assignment is about Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In Problem 5, we use the MDP the students have created to model how a coastal city government’s mitigation choices will affect its ability to adapt to rising sea levels over the course of multiple decades. At each timestep, the government may choose to invest in infrastructure or save its surplus budget. But the amount that the sea will rise is uncertain: each choice is a risk. Students model the city’s decision-making under two different time horizons, 40 or 100 years, and with different discount factors for the well-being of future people. In both cases, they see that choosing a longer time horizon or a smaller discount factor will lead to more investment now. Students then are introduced to five ethical positions on the comparative value of current and future generations’ well being. They evaluate their modeling choices in light of their choice of ethical position.
Contributors
- Ethics materials by Kathleen Creel, Lauren Gillespie, Dorsa Sadigh, and Percy Liang.
- Assignment by Lauren Gillespie, Skanda Vaidyanath, Percy Liang, Dorsa Sadigh, and Tatsunori Hashimoto.
Assignment goals
- Create a MDP and apply it to a real-life case of modeling decision-making under uncertainty.
Ethics goals
- Connect modeling choices to their ethical implications.
- Explore moral duties to current and future people.
Download Links
Additional Readings for Context (Instructors or Students):
- Shuvo, Yilmaz, Bush, & Hafen, A Markov Decision Process Model for Socio-Economic Systems Impacted by Climate Change
- IPCC AR6 Sea Level Projection Tool
- Climate change exacerbates hurricane flood hazards along US Atlantic and Gulf Coasts in spatially varying patterns | Nature Communications
- Justice and the Assignment of the Intergenerational Costs of Climate Change
- Weighing the Risks of Climate Change | The Monist | Oxford Academic
- Discount rates: A boring thing you should know about (with otters!) | Grist
- Trump Put a Low Cost on Carbon Emissions. Here’s Why It Matters. - The New York Times