Japan

Activities between IIASA and Japanese researchers in 2014 advanced research methods and provided insights for policy in areas ranging from climate change to technology diffusion.

Map of Japan

Map of Japan

Studies in 2014 included the development of a new set of scenarios to underpin future climate modeling, impact, vulnerability, adaptation, and mitigation assessments; research into ways to improve the representation of technological change in integrated assessment models to inform climate policy choices; and research into the evolution of diseases and commercially-exploited fish. IIASA’s longstanding connections to business in Japan include the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Tokyo Electric Power Company, with collaborations focused on efficient and sustainable energy systems. 

In addition, one Japanese doctoral students gained international and interdisciplinary research skills after winning a place in IIASA’s Young Scientists Summer Program in 2014.

Japan


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Adaptation response of agriculture to climate change

Scientists from the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program applied the GLOBIOM model to analyze a large number of climate change scenarios in order to investigate the extent to which producers facing climate change favored irreversible adaptation measures over low-cost field-scale adjustments. more

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Attendance at ASEAN Science and Technology Week (ASTW)

In cooperation with its National Member Organizations of Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group co-hosted a session on applied systems analysis as part of the ninth ASEAN Science and Technology Week (ASTW) in Bogor, Indonesia. more

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Governance for disaster risk management

Involving stakeholders is essential for elaborating and legitimizing public policy on disaster risk management during the post-disaster recovery process, as stipulated by the Rio Declaration and the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015. Such processes are at the core of the Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program’s work on disaster risk governance. more

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Negative emissions research

The negative emissions research of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) group was further developed building on several past collaborations and previous biomass and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) workshops at IIASA, in Indonesia, Brazil, and Tokyo. more

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New book on energy technology innovation

Scientists, alumni, and collaborators from the Transitions to New Technologies Program (TNT) contributed to 25 chapters of the book, Energy Technology Innovation: Learning from Historical Successes and Failures, published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. more

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Population dynamics and human capital

A new book, World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century, presented the results of the latest population projections from the World Population Program (POP) and the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Capital. more

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Sustainable forest management: Certification of boreal forests

With the Ecosystems Services and Management’s (ESM) Earth Observation Systems research group, the Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group developed a methodology to support assessment of forest management certification and policymaking. In 2014, this methodology was refined and applied to a case study in the boreal forest area. more

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Technology diffusion

The endogenous model formulation for technology diffusion constraints was further refined and parameterized to improve the representation of technological change in integrated assessment models (IAMs) and thereby inform climate policy choices. more

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Tropical Futures Initiative (TFI)

The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group organized the formal launch of the cross-sectoral “Tropical Futures Initiative” (TFI) at a workshop with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Jakarta, Indonesia, in February 2014. more

Asia


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Energy and Human Development

The Energy (ENE) Program made important strides in advancing the state of knowledge on energy poverty, the policy costs of expanding universal access to modern energy worldwide, and the synergies and tradeoffs between achieving universal access and other sustainable development goals. more

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Age and cohort change

Age and cohort change (ACC) researchers within the World Population Program (POP), continued working, in collaboration with Pew Research Center, on population projections of religious denominations around the world. more

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Attendance at ASEAN Science and Technology Week (ASTW)

In cooperation with its National Member Organizations of Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group co-hosted a session on applied systems analysis as part of the ninth ASEAN Science and Technology Week (ASTW) in Bogor, Indonesia. more

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Energy Primer online textbook

The original Energy Primer, released in conjunction with the Report of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA), has been expanded and updated and made available both online and as a downloadable textbook, along with with support material for educators. more

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Energy security

The work of the Energy (ENE) Program on energy security focuses on how energy security is framed as a policy issue in different political contexts and interacts with other energy policy objectives. more

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Forecasting adaptive capacity to climate change

In 2014 World Population Program (POP) scientists undertook an extensive analysis of natural disaster data for 167 countries over the past four decades as well as a number of studies carried out in individual countries and regions to test the hypothesis that education is a key factor in reducing disaster fatalities and enhancing adaptive capacity. more

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Global agro-ecological zones and FAO-GAEZ data portal

Following up on a widely acknowledged and highly successful release of the global agro-ecological zones (GAEZ v3) data portal by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and IIASA in 2012, the Water (WAT) Program in 2014 continued to collaborate with FAO to update data and extend model components in preparation of data portal GAEZ v4 scheduled for release in 2015. more

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Governance for disaster risk management

Involving stakeholders is essential for elaborating and legitimizing public policy on disaster risk management during the post-disaster recovery process, as stipulated by the Rio Declaration and the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015. Such processes are at the core of the Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program’s work on disaster risk governance. more

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Identifying common sources of population heterogeneity

The World Population Program (POP), with three other IIASA programs—Energy (ENE), Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG), and Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM), has begun to implement the crosscutting project “Accounting for socioeconomic heterogeneity in IIASA models.” more

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Indirect effects and informational entropy in natural and human networks

Advanced System Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop methods and case-studies analyzing ecological, economic, energy, financial and other networked empirical systems. These methods often originate in the natural science disciplines (e.g., physics, ecology) and then transfer to social sciences disciplines (e.g., economics). more

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Land use efficiency and security in China

The Water (WAT) Program carried out methodological development and socioeconomic analysis for the “Integrated Analysis and Modelling of Land Use Efficiency and Security under Rapid Agricultural Transformation in China” in Chongqing, Southwest China; the work was funded by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NSFC). more

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Negative emissions research

The negative emissions research of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) group was further developed building on several past collaborations and previous biomass and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) workshops at IIASA, in Indonesia, Brazil, and Tokyo. more

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Pension age and labor-force participation policies

An IIASA study for the first time estimates the trade-off between pension age and labor-force participation policies, showing that increasing labor force participation by as little as 1 or 2 percentage points could allow the pension age to be reduced by one year without increasing the burden on the working population. more

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Policy interventions of future emissions

In 2014 the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program completed a new generation of projections of global future air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions that outline the impacts of future policy decisions. more

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Resilience of world heritage sites

The impacts of livestock on endangered species have been understudied, particularly across the livestock-wildlife interface in forested protected areas. A member of the Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program investigated the impact of an emerging livestock sector in China's renowned Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas. more

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Resource governance

Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) scientists showed how political risks to large-scale solar institutions planned for the Mediterranean and North African region depend on the specifics of the sector, size of project, and type of activity. They also discussed the water shortage challenges facing Iran. more

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Risk pooling and sharing: Designing and assessing disaster safety nets

Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) research is critical in terms of overcoming the perception that insurance can contribute to risky behavior and thus disaster risk. It reveals how indexed systems, where payouts are triggered by an event parameter and not by loss claims, not only avoid moral hazard and encourage risk reduction, but can increase the access of the poor to much-needed safety nets. more

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Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)

The Energy (ENE) Program coordinated a number of major research community activities, in particular the further development of quantitative scenarios for the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which form part of the new framework adopted by the climate change research community to facilitate the integrated analysis of climate impacts, vulnerabilities, adaptation, and mitigation. more

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Sustainable forest management: Certification of boreal forests

With the Ecosystems Services and Management’s (ESM) Earth Observation Systems research group, the Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group developed a methodology to support assessment of forest management certification and policymaking. In 2014, this methodology was refined and applied to a case study in the boreal forest area. more

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Sustaining and improving rural livelihoods in India

The collaborative project, Sustaining and Improving Rural Livelihoods through Adaptive Approaches to Land, Soil Nutrient and Water Management, covers three geographically distinct but thematically related research projects in India, with the focus in 2014 on Gujarati. Exchange visits of IIASA and Indian institutions are building the basis of the integrated project cluster on sustaining and improving rural livelihoods. more

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Tropical Futures Initiative (TFI)

The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group organized the formal launch of the cross-sectoral “Tropical Futures Initiative” (TFI) at a workshop with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Jakarta, Indonesia, in February 2014. more

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How to improve air quality in China: A policy scenario study

Jun Liu of the College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China, explored the potential benefits in terms of air pollutant reduction through natural gas substitution strategies in power plants, residential combustion, and industrial boilers in the Jing-Jin-Ji region. more

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Natural disaster and social-ecological transitions

Wei Liu is working with the Risk, Policy and Vulnerability Program on human-environment relationships. He is studying the specific case of the Wolong Nature Reserve in Sichuan Province, China, where in May 2008 the local community’s economic, energy, and land use/cover transitions were devastated by a megadisaster, the 7.9 Mw Wenchuan earthquake, which caused massive damage and mortalities. more


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Last edited: 08 April 2015

Info Sheet on IIASA Activities with Japan

National Member Organization

NMO DETAILS

The Japan Committee for IIASA

Kazuhiko Takemoto

The Japan Committee for IIASA

Satoshi Kojima

Principal Researcher, Institute for Global Environmental Strategies (IGES)

The Japan Committee for IIASA

Kazuhiko Takeuchi

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International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313