IIASA research concentrates on solution-oriented approaches within the following four integrative research themes: food security, integrated watershed management, optimizing multiple uses of terrestrial ecosystem services, and safeguarding sustainable seafood and aquatic ecosystems.
The Agro-Ecological Systems (AES) team joined the IMPACT2C project which explores the likely impacts of a 2°C rise in global mean temperature in Europe and in three vulnerable areas in other parts of the world outside Europe: Bangladesh, Africa, and the Maldives. more
Agricultural products imported to Europe accounted for more than one-third of global deforestation associated with international agricultural trade, according to a new policy-oriented report prepared by a European consortium including IIASA, and published by the European Commission. more
Progress with EPIC crop modeling in 2013 allowed the Agro-Economic Systems (AES) group to join the international Ag-GRID initiative which aims to improve global gridded crop modeling. more
Strategies for addressing climate change, land-use, energy, and water can and must go beyond strategic planning for individual sectors, says a new study. more
Results from IIASA's global land use model GLOBIOM model, adapted to the Congo Basin region - the CongoBIOM model - were used to inform a World Bank study on future deforestation trends in the Congo Basin published in 2013. more
The Agro-Ecological Systems (AES) team joined the IMPACT2C project which explores the likely impacts of a 2°C rise in global mean temperature in Europe and in three vulnerable areas in other parts of the world outside Europe: Bangladesh, Africa, and the Maldives. more
Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) researchers studied climate change impacts on food security in four East Asian countries - China, Japan, South Korea, and Mongolia. more
Agricultural products imported to Europe accounted for more than one-third of global deforestation associated with international agricultural trade, according to a new policy-oriented report prepared by a European consortium including IIASA, and published by the European Commission. more
As environmental problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, integrated assessment modeling, pioneered by IIASA, is a useful adjunct to environmental policy analysis, integrating knowledge from more than one domain into a single framework. more
Total uncertainty in greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions changes over time due to “learning” and the structural change in the GHG emitters. Understanding uncertainty over time is important to improve setting emission targets in the future and was key to the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program's work in 2013. more
The Agro-Ecological Systems (AES) team joined the IMPACT2C project which explores the likely impacts of a 2°C rise in global mean temperature in Europe and in three vulnerable areas in other parts of the world outside Europe: Bangladesh, Africa, and the Maldives. more
Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) staff introduced a new method to up-scale dependent loss distributions from natural hazards to higher spatial levels, explicitly incorporating their dependency structure over the aggregation process. more
Changes in water availability and water temperature under climate change are likely to lead to higher electricity prices for most of Europe, according to a new study by IIASA's Water Futures and Solutions Initiative (WFaS). more
In 2013 the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program's Policy Science Interface (PSI) group together with ESM Forest Ecosystems Management (FEM) continued their involvement in the recharge.green project that aims to analyze bio-energy potential and impacts in the Alps from biomass, solar, wind, and hydro. more
For the EUCLIMIT Project ESM researchers contributed policy-related data and model results to illustrate the potential benefits and costs of various climate policies. more
Agricultural products imported to Europe accounted for more than one-third of global deforestation associated with international agricultural trade, according to a new policy-oriented report prepared by a European consortium including IIASA, and published by the European Commission. more
As environmental problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, integrated assessment modeling, pioneered by IIASA, is a useful adjunct to environmental policy analysis, integrating knowledge from more than one domain into a single framework. more
The aim of the project was to analyze two contrary and yet sustainable forest management options under the influence of climate change: maximization of forest stock and maximization of forest increment. more
Similarly to ecosystems, social systems – from firms to countries – are becoming more and more subject to various stressors whose effects penetrate throughout the system by means of social ties and economic links. The external disturbances here may be of political, economic, financial and even environmental nature. more
As the methods used to measure and inventory GHG emissions have significant uncertainties and gaps, the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program has been developing an advanced methodology of a Terrestrial Ecosystems Full Verified GHG Budget. more
Total uncertainty in greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions changes over time due to “learning” and the structural change in the GHG emitters. Understanding uncertainty over time is important to improve setting emission targets in the future and was key to the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program's work in 2013. more
In a review paper, developed in cooperation with colleagues from the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies of Japan, scientists of the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program argued that a multidisciplinary approach, involving the interplay with other policy objectives beyond air quality and climate, is needed to bring policies into line with current research on co-benefits. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program actively participated in two comparison exercises with the GLOBIOM model, looking at how the model reacts to different scenarios of climate change. more
Driven by the demand from modeling applications, the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been developing several different approaches to gaining information from data using mathematical statistics. more
In 2013 the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program made several new contributions to the development of optimal control theory for managing socio-environmental systems within a modeling framework. more
In 2013 substantive progress was made in extending and validating the IIASA EPIC model for major crops in Europe and for assessing the biophysical impacts of a mean 2°C temperature rise. more
The Earth Observation System (EOS) group has developed "Cropland Capture," an online game that engages citizen scientists as data gatherers in global land cover research. The Cropland Capture game was listed among the top 10 education games of 2013. more
Advances were made in 2013 by the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in stochastic downscaling, identifying structural changes in time series of socio-ecological transitions, and analyzing “big data" sets. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program's Policy and Science Interface (PSI) team has been considering how to mitigate climate change through the use of carbon-neutral bio-energy (BE), combined with carbon capture and storage (CCS), to produce negative-emissions conditions. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program's study of dynamical systems, control, and optimization, is based on understanding the heterogeneous interactions of the parts of large socioeconomic systems that function across many sectors and are driven by multiple agents. more
Predicting how living systems respond to changing conditions is difficult, as such responses are often at odds with human intuition. Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) research contributed to a mounting body of literature showing that eco-evolutionary dynamics can potentially exacerbate the worldwide biodiversity crises by causing secondary species extinctions. more
2013 saw the culmination of many projects aimed at the conceptual elucidation and technical underpinning of the links between individual-level mechanisms and their population-level ecological and evolutionary consequences, the initial phases of which have already been covered in earlier scientific updates. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program group on environmental resources and development (ERD) tackles the multiple interrelationships that exist between the natural environment and the human systems that actually or potentially affect it - population, land use, soil, water, chemicals, climate, crop management systems, and global trade. more
Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) research on the equitable governance of common goods analyzes the evolution of cooperation in joint enterprises and resource management, with particular emphasis on the nature and impact of governance measures such as positive or negative incentives. more
While most of the Evolution and Ecology (EEP) Program's studies in the field of exploitation-induced evolution have addressed questions of aquatic food resources and fisheries-induced evolution, the phenomenon of exploitation-induced evolution is relevant for any wild animal or plant population utilized for human consumption. more
Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) research on evolutionary vegetation modeling and management aims at improving models of the formation and maintenance of vegetation diversity, structure, and functioning. more
In 2013 the Forest Ecosystem Management (FEM) research group studied how to manage forests for maximization of forest stock and forest increment, as well as the availability of woody biomass for the energy sector. more
A Geo-Wiki study of more than 53,000 samples of human impact and land cover collected from over 60 individuals of varying expertise showed that the non-experts were as good as the experts at identifying human impact on land cover, and with additional training, could perform as well as experts. more
Fisheries play an important role in food security worldwide, but many aquatic food resources are not harvested sustainably. Research in 2013 by the Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) addressed sustainability and management options in important fishing areas. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been working for several years on Web-enabled structured modeling, multi-criteria analysis, and infrastructure for sharing research databases, all aimed at supporting collaborative interdisciplinary research for decision support. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been working to develop a well justified tool for integration of different viewpoints into a single picture. more
Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) researchers collaborated with partners to construct a global dataset describing all livestock production systems in terms of feed requirements, milk and meat productivity, and GHG emissions intensity. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program reviewed techniques available across various fields for characterizing the performance of environmental models with a focus on numerical, graphical, and qualitative methods. more
A major focus of risk modeling work in Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) has been on flood risk, which is often considered the dominant extreme event hazard. more
GAEZ will be among the first applications to benefit from the creation of the “best available” land cover database developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). more
The Methods for Economic Decision making under Uncertainty (MEDU) group contributed to the first results of the Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI-MIP), a pioneering collaboration within the international scientific community. more
The Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program contributed to papers that highlight how the global nitrogen cycle could change in the 21st century and the extent to which this is reflected in the current set of global emission scenarios. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) researchers in 2013 worked on developing new economic growth models capable of generating “green growth” and sustainable development solutions. more
Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) researchers study optimal management of heterogeneous resources, such as fish and forests, which is an important tool for advising policymakers on the best strategies for managing the environment. more
Special Projects in 2013 encompassed methodological upgrades to modeling tools and research with stakeholders in China and India with respect to future projects. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program’s Policy and Science Interface (PSI) group aims to strengthen various aspects of the role played by the ESM research program in the climate and land use change-relevant community. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program studied ecological risk assessment which evaluates impacts of immediate and long-term stressors on the environment. more
Comprehensive modeling of the effects of climate change, including extreme events, by RPV involves advanced techniques and takes into account stakeholder requests and needs. more
Through its integrated assessment work, the Energy (ENE) Program has played a central role in shaping community-wide climate research activities, including the so-called Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). more
In 2013 the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program carried out simulations of the actions and interactions of autonomous agents in order to assess their effects on systems as a whole. more
The Policy Science Interface (PSI) group of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program worked with ESM's Earth Observation Systems (EOS) to develop a new methodology to support assessment of, and decision making for, future forest management certification. more
The Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) is pursuing analyses on the risk of local failures contagiously spreading through an entire system, where systems are interconnected, as in financial markets, food-supply chains, disease dynamics, food webs, energy grids, transportation networks, and information flows, as well as the underlying network dynamics of such systems. more
The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 looked at systems marked by interlinkages and interdependencies, where failure of one entity or a cluster of entities can cause a cascading failure capable of bringing down an entire system. more
New global emission scenarios enable a fresh perspective on air pollution trends in different world regions, and in particular on the importance of proper governance for future air quality. more
In the area of uncertainty, resilience, risk and robust solutions, in 2013 ASA researchers focused on the resilience of ecosystems and ecosystem services, and considered the resilience of socioeconomic networks. more
IIASA Director General Prof. Dr. Pavel Kabat calls for a long-term systems approach to water research, and new partnerships with developing countries aimed at increasing education and cooperation. more
The Water Futures and Solutions: World Water Scenarios Initiative (WFaS), was launched in 2013, and aims to find robust solutions to water challenges under different future development pathways. more
Total uncertainty in greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions changes over time due to “learning” and the structural change in the GHG emitters. Understanding uncertainty over time is important to improve setting emission targets in the future and was key to the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program's work in 2013. more
Agricultural products imported to Europe accounted for more than one-third of global deforestation associated with international agricultural trade, according to a new policy-oriented report prepared by a European consortium including IIASA, and published by the European Commission. more
The LANDFLOW model, developed at IIASA, was applied to estimate how deforestation is connected to agricultural production in each country and how it relates to EU consumption via international trade. more
Henintsoa Onivola Minoarivelo studies the interplay between the effect of mutualistic interactions on the coevolution of phenotypic traits and how phenotypic character change influences the way species interact. more
Joyita Mukherjee carries out ecological network analysis to explore whole system interactions using a case study of one South African estuary, the Mdloti and in two different seasons. more
Frederic Isingizwe studies how donor-control and recipient-control models fit to experimental data individually and how they compare to one another. more
Pietro Landi assesses how the interplay between natural and artificial selection, in the simplest setting in which fishery and stock co-evolve, could lead to trait diversification due to disruptive selection. more
Yihun Dile details his YSSP project outcomes on the implications of intensifying water harvesting on upstream-downstream social-ecological resilience in the Lake Tana Basin, Ethiopia. more
Avelino Mondlane describes how his knowledge of advanced systems analysis was furthered by using multicriteria decision analysis to quantitatively assess South African water and energy challenges. more
Sunday Y. Hosu presents a study characterizing the present and future vulnerability of smallholder farming households in contrasting agro-ecological zones in Eastern Cape Province. more
Joyita Mukherjee carries out ecological network analysis to explore whole system interactions using a case study of one South African estuary, the Mdloti and in two different seasons. more
Prajal Pradhan summarizes his work on achieving food self-sufficiency at the global, regional, and local scale while addressing the need to minimize agriculturally induced environmental stresses. more
Shaukat Ali, of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, and the Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC), Ministry of Climate Change, Islamabad, Pakistan, explores the performance and sensitivity of climate and hydrological models across the Himalayan region to project climatic and hydrological changes over the next ten years. more
Alexandr Tarasyev discusses the building of a dynamic multiregional model with economic and demographic factors to provide insights into migration flows in Russia and the CIS region. more
Melissa Whitaker, University of California, Davis, outlines the results of her YSSP project in which she modeled the effects of interaction asymmetries in order to explore the role of functional diversity on interaction dynamics. more
Xiaojie Chen is working with the Evolutionary Ecology Program (EEP) to assess evolutionary dynamics in biological and social systems, specially the emergence and stability of cooperation in social networks, using evolutionary game theory and adaptive dynamics. more
Xue Wang of the Institute of Geographic Sciences & Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Science, gives the outcomes of her YSSP project which aimed to provide science-based evidence to assist policymakers in alleviating water stress problems in the North China Plain. more
Wei Liu discusses his postdoctoral work which relates to the transitioning human-environment relationships in the community of the Wolong Nature Reserve, China, in particular the period after it was struck by the 7.9 Mw Wenchuan earthquake. more
Kandice Harper describes her YSSP project in which she assessed the regional importance of SLCP mitigation measures in China using updated emission projections. more
Praveen Kumar Pathak describes the outcomes of his YSSP project, which provides new insights into fertility, by empirically exploring the potential role of social networks in shaping the fertility behavior of women in rural India. more
Wei Wang describes his YSSP project work in which he explored new economic approaches to include natural resources within the analytical framework. more
Long Ji shows how he measured the geographic concentration and regional localization of vegetable production in China with newly developed indicators. more
Xinxin Zhang of the Beijing Forestry University, China, discusses her YSSP project in which she integrated a dynamic recursive cross-entropy-based probabilistic downscaling model with IIASA's GLOBIOM model to downscale global or regional scale land use change assessments to the local level. more
Talha Manzoor discusses his YSSP project work on better understanding the factors driving the dynamics of individual consumer behavior in order to identify policies favorable to sustainability. more
Dmytro Melnyk looks at the range of possible climate change impacts on Ukrainian agriculture, Ukraine's possible role in maintaining world agricultural production and food security under climate change, and the country's potential to increase agricultural exports. more
Prajal Pradhan summarizes his work on achieving food self-sufficiency at the global, regional, and local scale while addressing the need to minimize agriculturally induced environmental stresses. more
Pietro Landi assesses how the interplay between natural and artificial selection, in the simplest setting in which fishery and stock co-evolve, could lead to trait diversification due to disruptive selection. more
Martin Bruckner discusses the outcomes of his YSSP project in which he studied the disparities in approaches to estimating the virtual natural resources embodied in international trade flows. more
Markus Enenkel gives initial results of his YSSP project which focused on the development of i) a new, transparent drought index derived from satellite data and ii) a mobile phone application to speed up the assessment of food security-related vulnerabilities. more
Christina Kaiser discusses her postdoctoral work in 2013 which relates to the feedback of the terrestrial carbon cycle to global environmental change. more
Nicklas Forsell is working with the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program with a focus on improving understanding of forest ecosystems and devising sustainable management strategies for them, both as sinks for carbon and as potential providers of fuel for energy. more
Eva-Maria Nordström discusses her postdoctoral work which aims to link two IIASA models and one Swedish model to create scenarios consistent with the IPCC Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) for a set of alternative Swedish forest management strategies. more
Yihun Dile details his YSSP project outcomes on the implications of intensifying water harvesting on upstream-downstream social-ecological resilience in the Lake Tana Basin, Ethiopia. more
Trond Husby summarizes his YSSP project, in which he analyzed the macroeconomic impacts on the Dutch economy that would occur if there were a partial shift in the allocation of risk from the public to the private sector. more
Melissa Whitaker, University of California, Davis, outlines the results of her YSSP project in which she modeled the effects of interaction asymmetries in order to explore the role of functional diversity on interaction dynamics. more
Frederic Isingizwe studies how donor-control and recipient-control models fit to experimental data individually and how they compare to one another. more
Eleanor Brush reports the results of her YSSP project, in which she asked i) is it possible for discriminators to stabilize cooperation? and ii) how does this depend on how much information the discriminators store and use? more
Carl Salk is working with the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program to develop statistical tools for comparing land classification error rates on maps with different cover categories and with the Risk Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program on protocol development for adaptive governance arrangements for tropical forest ecosystems. more
Kandice Harper describes her YSSP project in which she assessed the regional importance of SLCP mitigation measures in China using updated emission projections. more
David W. Shanafelt describes his YSSP project in which he provided new insights into a pivotal ecological model, as well as perspective on the spatial insurance hypothesis. more
Jacob Teter outlines his YSSP project work which looked at policies for the wise use of scarce water resources in energy infrastructure development, under GHG mitigation targets. more
Victor Maus summarizes his YSSP project in which he developed a methodology to improve information about land use and land cover trajectories in Brazil through the use of long-term satellite image data sets with high temporal frequency. more
