Facets of uncertainty: epistemic uncertainty, non-stationarity, likelihood, hypothesis testing, and communication

This paper presents a discussion of some of the issues associated with the multiple sources of uncertainty and non-stationarity in the analysis and modelling of hydrological systems. Different forms of aleatory, epistemic, semantic, and ontological uncertainty are defined. The potential for epistemic uncertainties to induce disinformation in calibration data and arbitrary non-stationarities in model error characteristics, and surprises in predicting the future, are discussed in the context of other forms of non-stationarity. It is suggested that a condition tree is used to be explicit about the assumptions that underlie any assessment of uncertainty. This also provides an audit trail for providing evidence to decision makers.Editor D. Koutsoyiannis; Associate editor S. Weijs