EVALUATION OF THE WORTH OF ADDITIONAL DATA1

Abstract
Inherent in every decision process is a certain amount of uncertainty, which is reduced with information. Perfect knowledge yields no uncertainty for a process, but perfect knowledge for hydrologic and water resource systems would require a highly excessive investment. Therefore, it is the aim of this paper to delineate a procedure that places a value on this uncertainty so that it may be compared to a cost of further investment, which would provide a basis for deciding the time at which the value of additional data does not exceed the cost of that data.A decision theory approach is employed on a hydrologic problem to formalize the steps in making a decision. Examples are given.

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