Developing a collaborative modeling framework for sustainability transformations

Scholars from the Exploratory Modeling of Human-natural Systems Research Group in the IIASA Advancing Systems Analysis Program, built a distributed modeling framework to foster the development of national  pathways by local research teams and their integration up to global scale. The integration is achieved through an iterative process called Scenathon (a marathon of scenarios).

This modeling framework underscores the importance of the interdependency of food- and land-use systems, emphasizing the criticality of collaboration to align local and global goals. In particular, results show that actions toward greater sustainability could sum up to 1 million hectares (Mha) net forest gain per year, 950 Mha net gain in the land where natural processes predominate, and an increased CO₂ sink of equivalent to 3.7 Gt CO₂  per year over the period 2020 to 2050 compared to current trends, while average food consumption per capita remains above the minimum adequate requirement in all countries.

By bringing multiple modeling teams from different countries together, this endeavor helps to promote engagement and coordination among stakeholders, with the ultimate goal of ensuring both the socioeconomic and ecological dimensions of community wellbeing.