Andrea Saltelli (born August 26, 1953, in Rome, Italy) is an Italian scholar specializing in quantification using statistical and sociological tools. He has extended the theory of sensitivity analysis to sensitivity auditing, focusing on physical chemistry, environmental statistics, impact assessment and science for policy. He is currently Counsellor at the UPF Barcelona School of Management.
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Saltelli earned his degrees in inorganic chemistry from Sapienza University of Rome in the summer of 1976. He then worked at the Italian Nuclear Authority ENEA and, for one year, at the Argonne National Laboratory in the United States. From 2005 to 2015, he worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, leading a team dedicated to econometrics and applied statistics. Between 2016 and 2020, he held the position of associate professor at the Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities (Senter for vitenskapsteori) at the University of Bergen. [1][2]
Andrea Saltelli has significantly contributed to the field of uncertainty and sensitivity analysis,[3][4][5] founding the SAMO (Sensitivity Analysis of Model Output) international conference series in 1995.[6] Saltelli has authored two handbooks on global sensitivity analysis,[7][8] the most recent of which has been translated into Chinese.[9] His works introduced the concepts of global sensitivity analysis[10] and total sensitivity indices,[11] helping to popularize[12] the variance-based sensitivity analysis work of the Russian mathematician Ilya M. Sobol.[13] His formulae for efficiently computing variance-based sensitivity indices[10] have been widely adopted by practitioners.[14][15] Saltelli has applied his expertise to diverse fields, including climate change,[16] ranking of higher education,[17] ecological footprint,[18] and composite indicators.[19][20] His recent research focuses on the reproducibility of scientific results,[21][22] principles for mathematical modelling[23][24] and the ethics of quantification.[25][26]
Andrea Saltelli has collaborated with Silvio Funtowicz, Jerome R. Ravetz and Jeroen van der Sluijs on the theories and applications of post-normal science.[27] He has also worked with the Belgian sociologist Paul-Marie Boulanger on the application of Niklas Luhmann's theories to the reproducibility crisis in scientific research[28] and to the COVID-19 pandemic.[29] Furthermore, Saltelli has collaborated with the Norwegian economist Erik Reinert on themes related to quantification in economics,[30][31] and with Daniel Sarewitz on the post-truth debate.[32]
In an interview for 'The Corbet Report',[33] Saltelli shared his early fascination with generating quantified evidence through statistical or mathematical modelling, highlighting his concern over how easy it is to produce poor-quality evidence, if not to manipulate data or deceive with numbers. This concern drove his engagement with issues in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of science, and science for policy[33] surrounding the responsible production of data.
This same concern led him to extend the theory of sensitivity analysis to sensitivity auditing, which aims to assess the entire process of knowledge and model generation, including explicit or implicit assumptions, interests, stakes and motivations on part of the developers.[34] According to existing guidelines[35] including those from the European Commission,[36] sensitivity auditing becomes particularly relevant when modelling results influence political decision-making processes.
- Saltelli, A., Chan, K., and Scott, M., Sensitivity Analysis. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2000.[37]
- Saltelli, A., Tarantola, S., Campolongo, F., and Ratto, M., Sensitivity Analysis in Practice. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2004.[38]
- Saltelli, A. et al., Global Sensitivity Analysis : The Primer. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, 2008.[39]
- Benessia, A., Funtowicz, S., Giampietro, M., Guimarães Pereira, A., Ravetz, J., Saltelli, A., Strand, R., and van der Sluijs, J., The Rightful Place of Science: Science on the Verge, Published by The Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University, 2016.[40]
- Saltelli, A., and Di Fiore, M., eds. The Politics of Modelling, Numbers Between Science and Policy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023.[41]
Norton, J., 2015. An introduction to sensitivity assessment of simulation models. Environmental Modelling & Software 69, 166–174.
Borgonovo, E., Plischke, E., 2016. Sensitivity analysis: A review of recent advances. European Journal of Operational Research 248, 869–887.
Da Veiga, Sébastien, Fabrice Gamboa, Bertrand Iooss, and Clémentine Prieur. 2021. Basics and Trends in Sensitivity Analysis. SIAM.
Saltelli A., Tarantola S., Campolongo F. and Ratto M. (2004) Sensitivity Analysis in practice. A guide to assessing scientific models, New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Saltelli, A., Ratto, M., Andres, T., Campolongo, F., Cariboni, J., Gatelli, D. Saisana, M., Tarantola, S., 2008, Global Sensitivity Analysis. The Primer, John Wiley & Sons publishers.
Saltelli A., 2002, Making best use of model evaluations to compute sensitivity indices, Computer Physics Communications, 145, 280-297.
Homma T., and Saltelli A., 1996, Importance measures in global sensitivity analysis of model output, 1996, Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Vol. 52 No. 1 1-17.
Toshimitsu HOMMA and Andrea SALTELLI, 2005, Use of Sobol's Quasirandom Sequence Generator for Integration of Modified Uncertainty Importance Measure, Journal of Nuclear Science and Technology, 32:11, 1164-1173.
A. Saltelli, I.M. Sobol', About the use of rank transformation in sensitivity analysis of model output, Reliability Engineering and System Safety 50 (1995) 225–239.
Owen, Art B. 2013. "Variance Components and Generalized Sobol' Indices." SIAM/ASA Journal on Uncertainty Quantification 1 (1): 19–41.
Owen, Art B., Josef Dick, and Su Chen. 2014. "Higher Order Sobol' Indices." Information and Inference: A Journal of the IMA 3 (1): 59–81.
Saltelli, A., D'Hombres, B., Sensitivity analysis didn't help. A practitioner's critique of the Stern review, 2010, Global Environmental Change, 20, 298-302.
Paruolo, P., Saisana, A., Saltelli, A., 2013, Ratings and rankings: Voodoo or Science? Journal Royal Statistical Society A, 176 (3), 609–634.
Giampietro, M., and Saltelli, A., 2014, Footprints to nowhere, Ecological Indicators, 46, 610–621.
OECD-JRC Handbook On Constructing Composite Indicators: Methodology And User Guide, OECD Statistics Working Paper JT00188147, STD/DOC(2005)3.
Kuc-Czarnecka, M., Lo Piano, S. and Saltelli, A. (2020) 'Quantitative storytelling in the making of a composite indicator', Social Indicators Research, 149(3), 775-802, 2020.
Philip B. Stark and Andrea Saltelli, Cargo-cult statistics and scientific crisis, SIGNIFICANCE, 05 July 2018.
A. Saltelli, G. Bammer, I. Bruno, E. Charters, M. Di Fiore, E. Didier, W. Nelson Espeland, J. Kay, S. Lo Piano, D. Mayo, R.J. Pielke, T. Portaluri, T.M. Porter, A. Puy, I. Rafols, J.R. Ravetz, E. Reinert, D. Sarewitz, P.B. Stark, A. Stirling, P. van der Sluijs, Jeroen P. Vineis, Five ways to ensure that models serve society: a manifesto, Nature 582 (2020) 482–484.
Andrea Saltelli, Lorenzo Benini, Silvio Funtowicz, Mario Giampietro, Matthias Kaiser, Erik Reinert, Jeroen P. van der Sluijs, 2020, The technique is never neutral. How methodological choices condition the generation of narratives for sustainability, Environmental Science and Policy, Volume 106, Pages 87-98.
A. Saltelli and P.-M. Boulanger, "Technoscience, policy and the new media. Nexus or vortex?," Futures, vol. 115, p. 102491, Nov. 2019.
P.-M. Boulanger and A. Saltelli, "Pandemic Luhmann," SSRN Electron. J., May 2020. Erik Reinert, Sylvi Endresen, Ioan Ianos, and Andrea Saltelli, 2016, "Epilogue: The Future of Economic Development between Utopias and Dystopias", in Handbook of alternative theories of economic development, Edited by Erik S. Reinert, Jayati Ghosh, and Rainer Kattel, Elgar Publishing, see here for the working paper version. J. Corbett, "Interview 1424 – Andrea Saltelli on The Crisis of Science," The Corbett Report, 2019.
Saltelli, A., van der Sluijs, J., Guimarães Pereira, Â., 2013, Funtowiz, S.O., What do I make of your Latinorum? Sensitivity auditing of mathematical modelling, International Journal Foresight and Innovation Policy, 9 (2/3/4), 213–234.
- How to teach research integrity, Video curated by the Open University of Catalonia, November 2023.
- Ethics of quantification, Video curated by the Open University of Catalonia, September 2021.
- Webinar at Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, February 5, 2021: 'Ethics of quantification', with Andrea Saltelli, Wendy Espeland, & Andy Stirling.
- Regulatory capture in the name of Enlightenment, Post-normal science Symposium, September 25, 2020.
- Sensitivity analysis, an introduction, Closing keynote at the 2019 ENBIS conference in Budapest, September 4, 2019, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, Budapest.
- Interview with the Corbet Report, The Crisis of Science, March 6, 2019.
