Comprehensive evaluation of energy R&D strategies

A comprehensive national energy research and development (ER&D) program must include many practical considerations which are intertwined with each other. The relevance of various concepts and techniques in system theory to these considerations, individually and collectively, is discussed. For the purpose of including most of these considerations in the comprehensive evaluation of ER&D strategies, a tentative procedure for integrating a number of relevant system theory techniques is presented. These techniques include multiattribute utility analysis, decision analysis, time and state dependent preference analysis, and portfolio analysis.