International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) | Schlossplatz 1 | A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
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At the height of the Cold War, 12 nations from the East and West meet in London to sign the charter establishing IIASA in the neutral setting of Austria.
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Signing the IIASA charter in 1972
George Dantzig, winner of the US National Medal of Science, is joined at IIASA by Nobel Prize laurates Tjalling Koopmans (USA) and Leonid Kantorovich (USSR) to expand the IIASA study of advanced systems science and methodology.
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Left to right: Tjalling Koopmans, George Dantzig, and Leonid Kantorovich
William D. Nordhaus received the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his research in integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis. Nordhaus’s first economic model of global warming was published at IIASA in 1975 entitled “Can we control Carbon Dioxide?”. Many climate change models trace their conceptual and methodical roots to models developed by Nordhaus at IIASA.
The first YSSP is a huge success, and since 1977 IIASA has attracted over 2100 talented young scientists to spend a summer working with scholars from other nations and disciplines. Many go on to take senior posts in academia, business, and government.
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Young Scientist Summer Program 1979
IIASA scientists warn the world about the dangers of climate change and suggest pioneering solutions such as capturing and storing carbon. IIASA was one of the two institutions worldwide that, by the mid-1970s, already had an established research program on climate change and policy.
A new research field, Adaptive Ecosystem Policy and Management, is founded at IIASA based on results of a study relating forest conditions to pest propagation that has implications for forest management policy throughout North America and Scandinavia.
A chance conversation between IIASA colleagues brings unexpected results. James Vaupel, a US demographer mentions a scientific problem to Soviet mathematician, Anatoli Yashin. "I think I can help," Yashin replies. The two go on to develop more reliable projections of population aging in developed countries.
IIASA publishes the first comprehensive, truly global assessments of energy issues, resulting in the internationally acclaimed report, Energy in a Finite World.
A research team IIASA of chemists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, hydrologists, economists, computer specialists, and managers completes a study on eutrophication and management of Lake Balaton, Central Europe's largest lake. Its findings influence water policy in Italy, Japan, the USA, and the USSR.
Groundbreaking research by a scholar at IIASA provides the intellectual underpinnings for the later US Department of Justice's antitrust case against Microsoft. The findings pioneered the modern approach to increasing returns which shows how powerful firms can exploit the particular nature of high-tech markets to the disadvantage of opponents who offer better products.
IIASA researchers establish the first permanent computer network connections for science and research between the East and West during the Cold War era and 10 years before the Internet.
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The IIASA computer net in 1983
IIASA scholars publish Sustainable Development of the Biosphere, which is quickly accepted by the science community as the core scientific text on sustainable development.
Marking completion of the first international study of the impacts of climate change, as well as its first jointly funded research with UNEP, IIASA publishes two large volumes of results from the Climate Impacts Project.
An IIASA scientific model of Europe's acid rain problem is officially adopted by the 28 countries of the Geneva Convention on Transboundary Air Pollution as the main technical support for renegotiation of the treaty. This is the first time that all parties to a major international treaty agree to accept a single scientific model.
IIASA brings together leading economists from Eastern and Western Europe, Japan, USA, and USSR to identify economic reforms to help the Soviet Union overcome its economic crisis and make the transition into a market economy in the 1990s. Several participants of the IIASA project subsequently return to Russia as Government Ministers and implement many of the project’s recommendations.
IIASA researchers complete the first consistent continent-wide assessment of forest resources in Europe and the European regions of the former Soviet Union, revealing the alarming consequences of air pollution for European forests.
IIASA’s scientific model of Europe’s acid rain problem, known as the Regional Acidification Information and Simulation (RAINS) Model, underpins the agreement of 33 European governments to reduce damaging emissions of sulfur dioxide. It is officially adopted by the 33 countries of the Geneva Convention on Transboundary Air Pollution as the main technical support for renegotiation of the treaty.
Five IIASA scientists are chosen to be Lead Authors of the Second Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since then, over 40 IIASA scholars have played leading roles in the IPCC's third, fourth, fifth, and sixth assessment reports, which provide the world with the most scientifically advanced, comprehensive, and rigorous analysis of the state of climate change.
IIASA IPCC authors AR2 | © IIASA
From left to right: Hans-Holger Rogner, Arnulf Gruebler, Leo Schrattenholzer, and Nebojsa Nakicenovic
Funded by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, the RAINS model is extended to facilitate the analysis of sulfur dioxide pollution in Asia and is presented to energy planners and government officials in 18 Southeast Asian nations.
A second edition of the IIASA book The Future Population of the World: What Can We Assume Today? is published. It includes the first-ever probabilistic population scenarios (predicting world population will probably never double again) and new findings on population aging.
The World Energy Council partners with IIASA in a unique study on Global Energy Perspectives. This analyzes how current and near-term energy decisions will have long-lasting implications throughout the twenty-first century. The findings of the five-year study are presented at the World Energy Congress in 1995 and 1998, and the results published in a Cambridge University Press book in 1998.
IIASA scientists and models play a leading role in preparing the most comprehensive and sophisticated scenarios yet of greenhouse gas emissions for the twenty-first century. The work is published as the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Cambridge University Press in 2000.
IIASA demographers are first to forecast in a Nature article that the world population will peak in the twenty-first century and then begin to decline.
IIASA scientists complete the most comprehensive study of Russian forests and land resources ever undertaken. Results are presented to President Putin of Russia.
The United Nations commissions IIASA scientists to analyze the likely impacts of climate change on agriculture to 2080. The influential report is published at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It highlights the need to focus on extending the mitigation scope of the Kyoto Protocol and put the issue of adaptation to climate change on the global agenda of international negotiations.
IIASA scientists reveal that undesirable genetic changes are taking place in fish stocks as a result of commercial exploitation. Documentation of these evolutionary changes could have provided a valuable early warning signal of the collapse of a fish stock such as the northern cod in the early 1990s.
Disaster aid is often too little and too late. It also discourages governments and individuals from taking advantage of the high returns to preventive action. In a Science article, scholars from the IIASA Risk, Modeling and Society Program identified several innovative approaches to free vulnerable countries from dependence on unpredictable post-disaster assistance.
IIASA scientists share the Nobel Peace Prize with authors of the IPCC reports and Al Gore for "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." They follow in the footsteps of Nobel Prize laurates who have worked at IIASA: Tjalling Koopmans and Leonid Kantorovich (Economics, 1974); Paul Crutzen (Chemistry; 1995); and Thomas Schelling (Economics, 2005).
© IPCC
IIASA demographers show that global speed of aging is likely to peak between 2020 and 2030, and then decelerate, although there will be further increases in the level of aging throughout the century. The journal article becomes one of the most cited papers on global aging.
IIASA analyses provide quantitative information to the European Commission for the proposal and subsequent negotiations on the EU Climate and Energy Package, which was accepted by the European Council in 2008 and aims, inter alia, at a 20 percent reduction in EU greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
Research from IIASA and partners warns that the production of commonly used biofuels, such as biodiesel from rapeseed and bioethanol from corn (maize), depending on nitrogen fertilizer uptake efficiency by the plants, can contribute as much or more to global warming by nitrous oxide emissions than cooling by fossil fuel savings.
IIASA co-develops and hosts the Representative Concentration Pathways database, equipping the climate change research community with common greenhouse gas emissions data.
IIASA and partners identify 14 measures to reduce short lived climate forcers, providing scientific evidence for the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and its 73 state partners.
IIASA published the Global Energy Assessment, the first ever fully integrated assessment of its kind that went on to provide the scientific basis and key objectives for the UN Sustainable Development Goal #7 on ensuring access to sustainable energy for all.
IIASA and partners launch a revamped Geo Wiki to harness the power of citizen science to collect and verify land cover data, thereby dramatically improving the quality of the data.
The European Commission agrees a proposal for new climate and energy targets for 2030 informed by IIASA modeling results.
IIASA publishes the first population projections that include level of educational attainment for all countries of the world. The projections are based on the broadest synthesis of expert knowledge on drivers of fertility, mortality, migration, and education in all parts of the world.
IIASA brings together high-level officials and experts from the European Commission, the Eurasian Economic Commission, member states of the European Union and the Eurasian Economic Union, as well as other European and Asian countries, to explore the challenges and opportunities of establishing closer economic relations and an eventual creation of a “common economic space from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” Through a series of workshops and other events that take place between 2014 and 2019, the sides enhance mutual understanding.
The Sustainable Development Goals are formally adopted, with IIASA science underpinning goals on tackling climate change and ensuring access to sustainable energy for all.
IIASA science contributed to talks leading up to the Paris Agreement, providing the only study to show that it was technologically feasible to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Research by IIASA and partners into the land use change impacts and the related greenhouse gas emissions of the biofuel feedstocks consumed in the European Union provides inputs to the revisions of the EU Renewable Energy Directive including the introduction of biofuels sustainability criteria for all biofuels produced or consumed in the EU.
A decade of IIASA demographic research demonstrating why education should be the priority investment for development budgets informs the German Federal Ministry for Development’s decision to allocate 25% of its entire funding for education.
The Zambezi River Basin Commission develops a strategic plan for water, energy, and food management based on findings from an IIASA-led study.
The Zurich Food Resilience Alliance renewed its partnership with IIASA to apply its research into systemic risks to help render two million people around the globe resilient against flooding.
Pictured: Parvati Gurung, Department of Hydrology and Meteorology, Nepal, is responsible for flood early-warning for thousands of people in the Karnali River basin.
IIASA demographers introduce a completely new way of measuring at aging. The old age threshold is defined not only by chronological age but takes into account people's life expectancy, cognitive and physical health among others.
The Chinese Government officially adopts a model by IIASA to strengthen air quality management in the country.
IIASA contributes to a ground breaking report by the Indonesian Ministry of National Development Planning showing how the country could gain tremendous economic benefits by transitioning to a low-carbon economy.
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IIASA researchers develop a tracker that visualizes regional data on daily COVID-19 cases for 26 European countries. It highlights key demographic and socioeconomic information to help inform decisions by health professionals, governments, and policymakers to address the crisis.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, IIASA partners with the International Science Council to bring together hundreds of experts to use systems thinking to identify how best to rebuild a world that is more resilient, sustainable, and just.
IIASA research is taken up in the development of the post-2020 Biodiversity Framework under the Convention on Biodiversity as well as feeding into numerous global assessments and global reports on biodiversity.
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