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Impact Sheet #14, February 2017. IIASA played a significant role in bringing under control toxic air pollutants that damage human health and the environment. The Regional Acidification Information and Simulation (RAINS) model, developed at IIASA, was at the center of international environmental negotiations to achieve cleaner air in Europe at lowest cost.

Impact Sheet #13, February 2017. The IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) brings talented PhD students to Laxenburg, Austria, to work on independent research projects in collaboration with top researchers in their fields. IIASA also runs a thriving postdoctorate program and many capacity-building events and workshops for scientists and policymakers worldwide.

Policy Brief #15, January 2017. Greenhouse gas emissions from the land-use sector will be lower if the rising demand for bioenergy is met with worldwide protection for areas important for biodiversity and carbon storage, shows this IIASA policy brief. 

Policy Brief #14, November 2016. Two temperatures feature prominently in the Paris Climate Agreement: 1.5°C and 2°C. New studies from IIASA reveal substantially different climate impacts under these two targets and provide a clearer understanding of the challenges and benefits of aiming low on global warming goals.

Policy Brief #13, October 2016. To overcome pressures on water quantity and quality in the Rio Grande/Bravo the 1944 Water Treaty between Mexico and the USA must be adapted, taking full advantage of the institutional flexibility to include environmental sustainability.

Policy Brief #12, July 2016. Population aging is a major force reshaping economies and societies. New characteristic-based measures, developed at IIASA, provide a more accurate assessment of the challenges of population aging and the effects of policies to overcome them.

Luis J. Castro returned to IIASA in February and March to re-visit the models he worked on at IIASA from 1977-1982. Below he shares his professional experience over the last 40 years.

Impact Sheet #12, January 2015. IIASA plays a leading role in shaping the annual Emission Gap Reports, launched by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2010. These reports assess whether emissions pledges from countries during the international climate negotiations are on track to limit temperature increase to 2ºC or less this century. The reports appear each year to inform governments and the international policy community about the possible gap that needs to be closed in order or the world to follow a globally sustainable pathway toward wider objectives, such as the green economy.

Impact Sheet #2, November 2014. Natural disasters, particularly in developing countries, can swamp governments’ ability to support the relief and reconstruction process. Through its catastrophe simulation (CATSIM) model, IIASA has helped many governments to identify their financial and economic resilience and design efficient and appropriate risk-management and -financing strategies, putting governments into a position to proactively tackle the increasing burdens from natural disasters.

Imact Sheet #3, November 2014. Overfishing not only reduces the size of fish populations, it can alter their actual gene pool. In 1998 IIASA began researching fisheries-induced evolution with the aim of i) developing methodological tools to evaluate the evolutionary and ecological consequences of overfishing and ii) using resulting insights to identify evolutionarily sustainable management strategies.

Impact Sheet #4, November 2014. IIASA launched the GAINS model in 2006 to explore the synergies and trade-offs between control of local and regional air pollution and mitigation of global greenhouse gases (GHGs). GAINS is used to analyze the future socioeconomic drivers of emissions, emission control options, the chemical transformation and dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, and ensuing human health and environmental impacts.

Impact Sheet #5, November 2014. IIASA has developed an integrated modeling cluster built around the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) which integrates the agricultural, bioenergy, and forestry sectors and draws on comprehensive socioeconomic and geospatial data. It is integrated with several other models developed by IIASA and partners.

Impact Sheet #6, November 2014. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asked the scientific community to develop new scenarios for the Fifth Assessment Report. IIASA scientists contributed to developing two new sets of scenarios: the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)—four pathways for emissions, concentrations, and radiative forcing; and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)—five possible paths human societies could follow over the next century. The RCP and SSP databases are hosted by IIASA.

Impact Sheet #7, November 2014. MESSAGE is a IIASA modeling framework for medium- to long-term energy system planning, energy policy analysis, and scenario development. It provides a flexible framework for the comprehensive assessment of major energy challenges. It has been applied extensively to developing scenarios for large global research programs, such as the latest three assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 2012 Global Energy Assessment.

Impact Sheet #8, November 2014. The Global Energy Assessment (GEA), coordinated by IIASA, provides the scientific basis for the 2012 global initiative, Sustainable Energy for All (SEforALL), launched by former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. In addition, IIASA/GEA scientists developed analytical tools and policy options for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the largest public funder of projects to improve the global environment. GEA authors, many from IIASA, also provided substantive input to the 2014 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report.

Impact Sheet #11, November 2014. IIASA researchers have launched several initiatives to reduce uncertainties in the mapping of land cover, mobilizing partners in the national and international mapping communities to share data and products to help develop an accurate global cropland map at minimal cost.

Impact Sheet #10, November 2014. Population research at IIASA is interdisciplinary and thus looks beyond the traditional bounds of demography to study how development of human capital helps to address social, economic, and environmental challenges. These interactions, which emphasize human capital formation, are among the most important challenges facing IIASA demographers today.

Impact Sheet #9, November 2014. Advanced systems analysis at IIASA helps decision makers resolve large-scale socio-technical problems in the short, medium, and long term. The problems IIASA tackles are immense, interconnected, persistent, and urgent. They affect human wellbeing and the environment on which we depend. They are of such complexity that to neglect a single aspect of them could be very costly—and not just in monetary terms.

Impact Sheet #1, November 2014. Arctic temperatures have risen at twice the global average rate over the last 40 years. In recent years, concerns arose that the warming from short-lived climate forcers (SLCFs), like methane, tropospheric ozone, and especially black carbon, might be greater than that of CO2. In 2009 the intergovernmental Arctic Council asked IIASA to investigate the effects of SLCFs in the Arctic using its Greenhouse gas – Air pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model.

A system integration of ground and remote sensing data that parametrizes Russian territory at a 1km spatial resolution for forests and includes tree species, age, and biomass distribution.