In 2015, Austrian institutions and IIASA collaborated on numerous projects from a new citizen observatory land use monitoring to projecting demographic change.
Austria map
As IIASA's host country, Austria benefits from multiple activities between Austrian and IIASA researchers. Research highlights from 2015 included:
demographic collaborations between IIASA and two Vienna-based institutions to project population and human capital for all countries of the world;
an analysis of bio-energy potential and impacts in the Alps from biomass, solar, wind, and hydro; and
the development of a new citizen observatory and innovation marketplace for land use and land cover monitoring.
Other activities included five researchers from Austria or based in Austria took part in IIASA's programs for young scientists.
Researchers in the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program contribute to the understanding of sustainability by applying the experiences of their particular studies, each of which deals with the concept in its own way. This allows for development of diverse, system-analytic approaches to quantifying sustainability. more
The Water (WAT) Program helped develop a new method for calculating land footprints. This combines the IIASA LANDFLOW model—which traces land embodied in trade and consumption—with environmental economic-accounting. Land footprints were also further analyzed by the program in terms of land quality, resource use, and environmental impacts. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program’s Environmental Resources and Development (ERD) group has used the GLOBIOM model to analyze the consequences of climate change for the agricultural sector, with a focus on food availability consequences in developing countries. more
Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers apply contemporary approaches to analyze newly available “big data” from social media datasets to find new insights. more
Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop and study stylized economic growth models and advance methods of the optimal control theory needed to analyze such models, also taking inherent uncertainties into account. Long-term economic growth is driven by the dynamics of natural, physical, and human capital and is subject to feedback with the environment. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program has won funding for LandSense, a new citizen observatory and innovation marketplace for land use and land cover monitoring. Providing critical monitoring of change on the ground, the project will also include campaigns involving multiple stakeholders to ensure that citizen observations contribute to EU-wide environmental governance and decision making. more
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a particular challenge for sustainability. Decisions need to be made now to avoid unsustainable futures, but the basis for these decisions, in terms of both data and models, encompasses vast inherent uncertainties. Proper accounting of uncertainties when verifying mitigation efforts and analyzing scenarios of future emissions is the focus of several Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program studies. more
Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop and analyze stylized models of biological populations (e.g., fish or forests), in which individuals’ growth significantly depends on their size or age and on the size or age of others. The aim is to understand the consequences of various management strategies, and to identify those, which can optimize typical economic (e.g., profit) and environmental (e.g., biodiversity) objectives. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program’s Policy and Science Interface (PSI) group has advanced research into negative emissions technologies—ways of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere—investigating whether they are a viable way of tackling climate change. more
Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop dynamic network models of ecological, economic, and social systems; in particular, financial systemic risk and cascading failures in the inter-bank lending network are studied. more
Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program researchers and partners developed a decision support system (DSS) for the entire Alpine region, aiming at quantifying renewable energy potentials balanced with ecosystem services protection. more
Stochastic GLOBIOM has been used to analyze interdependencies and trade-offs between structural and financial measures for hedging systemic risks and food, energy, water, environmental security in land use systems, which can be induced by climate change and weather variability. more
The successful completion of the fast-track analysis under the global Water Futures and Solutions (WFaS) initiative, is a major achievement of the Water (WAT) Program. The analysis has yielded the first set of multi-model, quantified scenarios of water demand with a focus on the domestic, industrial, and energy sectors. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program’s Agro-Ecological Systems (AES) group worked to advance global and regional gridded crop modeling, investigating the impacts of future climate change and nutrient depletion. The vulnerability of crop production to climate change was a key focus for the group. more
Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers apply contemporary approaches to analyze newly available “big data” from social media datasets to find new insights. more
In 2015 the Transitions to New Technologies (TNT) Program won prestigious European Research Council (ERC) funding for a project on social influence and the diffusion of low-carbon innovations (SILCI). Given the highly competitive and selective nature of these multi-year, multi-million Euro ERC research grants, this showcases the quality and pioneering contributions to innovation studies and low carbon system transitions of TNT’s researchers. more
The Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) assembles evidence and insights on how human exploitation alters the heritable traits of targeted populations and explores options for reducing unwanted alterations. more
The Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program has developed a new method that assigns particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) to emission sources at the different scales of origin. This work allowed the implications of the recent emission scandal on local air quality to be quantified. more
The German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) is a scientific advisory body set up by the German government to provide policy advice. Transitions to New Technologies (TNT) researcher Nebojsa Nakicenovic has been one of the nine appointed members since the inception of WBGU and has been reappointed for a second term lasting to 2016. more
The Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program takes a unique systems perspective that integrates physical, social, economic, and policy aspects of air quality management. In 2015, the program introduced these aspects into numerous new policy and scientific initiatives that address the role of air quality management for improving human wellbeing and contribute to multiple UN Sustainable Development Goals. more
Meeting the challenges of climate change, disasters, and competition for energy and resources requires transitions in the way we govern. In 2015 the focus of the Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program’s work on governance was on open government, stakeholder perceptions, and the involvement of multiple stakeholder perspectives in participatory settings. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program has won funding for LandSense, a new citizen observatory and innovation marketplace for land use and land cover monitoring. Providing critical monitoring of change on the ground, the project will also include campaigns involving multiple stakeholders to ensure that citizen observations contribute to EU-wide environmental governance and decision making. more
The project Linking Climate and Development Policies – Leveraging International Networks and Knowledge Sharing (CD-LINKS) kicked off in September 2015. CD-LINKS aims to study the links between climate policies and multiple sustainable development objectives. more
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a particular challenge for sustainability. Decisions need to be made now to avoid unsustainable futures, but the basis for these decisions, in terms of both data and models, encompasses vast inherent uncertainties. Proper accounting of uncertainties when verifying mitigation efforts and analyzing scenarios of future emissions is the focus of several Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program studies. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program has carried out a series of improvements to the quantitative modeling of burned areas in Europe under historical climate, supported by its standalone fire model (SFM). more
Modeling by the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program has shown that efforts to reduce the fine particulate matter (PM2.5) precursor emissions will not deliver the expected drop in air pollution unless a reduction of agricultural ammonia (NH3) emissions is achieved. more
In view of the global climate targets that were agreed in Paris in 2015, the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program revisited the feasibility and economics of achieving deep cuts in non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions. This analysis revealed much higher emissions from global oil production and extended shale gas extraction than previously thought. more
In this emerging area of research, the Energy Program (ENE) aims to advance the understanding of the political-economic dynamics of energy transitions and its variation between countries. This analysis determines the most effective strategies for national and international policy action. more
Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program researchers and partners developed a decision support system (DSS) for the entire Alpine region, aiming at quantifying renewable energy potentials balanced with ecosystem services protection. more
The Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program built on its breakthrough in assessment of flood-risk distributions which accounts for spatial correlation between river basins and therefore avoids underestimation of risk. The program has now incorporated different types of copula dependency measures, such as the Archimedian- and Frank-based copula, and various dependency structures. more
In 2015 the Paris COP21 and the G7 Initiative on Climate Risk Insurance showed that insurance against the impacts of climate change is a key issue. The Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) Program played a role in the history and drafting of both initiatives and is contributing to the evidence needed for their implementation. more
A new method developed by the Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases (MAG) Program offers an unconventional perspective on the origin of harmful pollution, especially in urban areas in developing countries. The findings show that beyond vehicle emissions or household fuels, any (cost-) effective intervention strategy will need to addresses the socioeconomic complexities of a wide range of other economic sectors, not least agriculture. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program’s Earth Observation Systems (EOS) group has continued their work on boreal forests. In 2015, improvements were made to the Terrestrial Ecosystem Full Verified Carbon Budget (FCA), including updating its ecological and economic aspects, and applying it to the ecosystems of Northern Eurasia. more
Gillian Foster, of the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria, estimated the future demand for ethylene in the US and the impact of gas prices. more
Carmen Klausbruckner of the Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa, examined how well climate change and air pollution policies are integrated in South Africa. more
Peter Bednarik, of the Evolution and Ecology and Risk, Policy and Vulnerability programs, designed a computer game based on the forestry sector which can be used to investigate the conditions under which a “tragedy of the commons” would be avoided. more
Christina Kaiser is working in the Evolution and Ecology Program using a computer model that she developed and tested herself which simulates decomposing litter or soil at microbial-relevant scales to understand mechanisms emerging from complex microbial interactions at the microscale. more
Tamara Fetzel of the Institute of Social Ecology, Austria, assessed grazing intensity worldwide and examined whether it can be sustainably increased to meet future food demands. more
Sennai Mesfun, of the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, used the IIASA BeWhere model to investigate whether the feasibility of renewable energy can be enhanced by using gas/liquid fuels as power storage. more
Teppo Repo, of the University of Eastern Finland, explored the spatial differences in treatment outcomes for patients with type 2 diabetes, in an effort to help optimize use of health care resources in North Karelia, Finland. more
Natalia Borisevich of the Institute of Forest, Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Science, Russia, estimated the economic value of the ecosystem services provided by specially protected natural areas (SPNAs), showing that good management can result in great economic gains. more
Using the case study of the promotion of electric cars in the UK, Anton Talantsev, of Stockholm University, Sweden, developed an approach to identify and profile policy stakeholders, a vital step in achieving successful policy. more
Daniel Sanchez, of the University of California, USA, investigated the optimal deployment of renewable energy in the Alps, while balancing the twin concerns of climate change and ecosystem protection. more
