Scientific achievements

EEP’s work spans all IIASA research themes: Food & Water, Poverty & Equity, and Energy & Climate Change, as well as advancing systems analysis to bring new insights to these problem areas.

• Research on Evolutionarily Sustainable Consumption and the Integrated Assessment of Fishery Systems examines options and challenges for the development of aquatic food resources (Food & Water).
• Work on the Equitable Governance of Common Goods investigates how top-down regulations for managing common goods or open-access resources can be improved by integrative assessments of stakeholder conflicts and by scaling up successful characteristics of self-organized and resilient bottom-up governance (Poverty & Equity).
• Studies on the Eco-evolutionary Dynamics of Living Systems, Systemic Risk and Network Dynamics, and Evolutionary Vegetation Modeling and Management, open up new methodological avenues for the applied systems analysis of biodiversity, tangled interactions, and ecosystem dynamics (Advanced Systems Analysis).
• The process-based modeling approach of Evolutionary Vegetation Modeling and Management will enable novel features in next-generation dynamic global vegetation models, which are instrumental for assessing climate impacts (Energy & Climate Change).

Evolutionarily sustainable consumption

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

Integrated assessment of fishery systems

Fisheries play a key role in food security worldwide, but many aquatic food resources are fully exploited, overexploited, or depleted. This reflects the difficulties of addressing the competing demands on the services rendered by aquatic ecosystems, and when accounting for the multiple stressors they face. More

Equitable governance of common goods

Long-standing IIASA work on how to facilitate cooperation has acquired additional strength through a cross-cutting initiative aiming to compare, combine, and integrate approaches from different disciplines. Formal and informal institutions for overcoming social dilemmas and the tragedy of the commons are at the center of this research. More

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of living systems: Applications

As anthropogenic impacts continue to alter the environments to which the world’s biodiversity has adapted, accounting for the interplay of ecology and evolution becomes ever more critical to accurately predict consequences and to propose effective mitigating actions. More

Eco-evolutionary dynamics of living systems: Theory

Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) researchers further strengthened the individual-based foundations of ecological and evolutionary models. More

Systemic risk and network dynamics

The Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP), in collaboration with other IIASA programs, has been investigating the potential for cascading failures in interconnected systems, such as financial systems and trade networks. More

Evolutionary vegetation modeling and management

Understanding the structure and dynamics of worldwide vegetation patterns is critical for predicting future climatic change. Research by the Evolution and Ecology Program (EEP) applies mathematical models to elucidate the formation and maintenance of vegetation diversity, structure, and functioning. More

Last edited: 20 April 2016