Decision Center for a Desert City
DCDC is one of five research projects funded by the National Science Foundation’s
Decision Making under Uncertainty initiative. DCDC research, outreach, and
educational activities focus on water management decisions in central Arizona
in the context of the area’s rapid population growth and urbanization,
complex political and economic systems, variable desert climate, and the
specter of global climate change. Although DCDC is a regional case study,
its research products and decision-support tools can be generalized to rapidly
growing desert regions worldwide.
DCDC scholars conduct research that integrates knowledge across academic
disciplines, and work closely with local and state resource managers to
enhance long-term decision making about water resources. DCDC seeks to build
a new model of science and policy integration in which decision-makers and
scientists collaborate on important research questions and experiment with
new methods.