Case Study: University of British Columbia achieves transparent, probabilistic integrated climate assessment with Lumina Decision Systems' Analytica

Integrated Assessment of Climate Change

The University of British Columbia, led by Professor Hadi Dowlatabadi, faced the complex challenge of modeling long‑term, global interactions between human systems and the climate—including deep uncertainty, regional differences, and policy responses. To make assumptions transparent and handle probabilistic uncertainty, the team built the Integrated Climate Assessment Model (ICAM) using Analytica from Lumina Decision Systems as their modeling platform.

Using Analytica (Lumina Decision Systems), ICAM combined five modular subsystems, expert‑elicited probability distributions, 17 regional representations (1975–2100), endogenous technology/demography, and adaptive agents to test mitigation, adaptation, and geoengineering policies. The model produced tractable, policy‑relevant results—for example, mitigation costs typically under 2% of global GDP, a required decarbonization rate near 3%/year to stabilize concentrations, and the prominence of mitigation cost uncertainty over climate sensitivity—and introduced methodological innovations now used in integrated assessment. Lumina Decision Systems’ Analytica enabled transparent, probabilistic exploration of these findings.

University of British Columbia

Hadi Dowlatabadi

Author of ICAM