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Social and policy simulations, as well as serious games, are participatory processes through which diverse societal stakeholders collectively explore a complex reality and complex challenges. These participatory processes combine both social and natural science insights to foster experiential learning. They enable participants to make sense of the complexity associated with policy issues, and reflect on system inter-linkages and stakeholder plurality. These methods have become increasingly recognised for informing and guiding policy in complex settings, including sustainable development, climate change mitigation/adaptation and disaster risk reduction.

Geo-Wiki provides anyone with the means to engage in monitoring of the earth's surface by classifying satellite, drone or ground-level imagery. Data can be input via desktop or mobile devices, with campaigns and games used to incentivize input. These innovative techniques have been used to successfully integrate citizen-derived data sources with expert and authoritative data to address pressing policy-related questions (e.g. European environmental policy, SDG indicators and more).

Integrative qualitative system mapping (IQSM) enables the systematic and transparent integration of diverse qualitative data. It is particularly useful as a tool supporting mixed methods research addressing nexus issues in sustainable development.  

Design Thinking (DT) is a participatory approach that focuses on understanding user-design problems with a variety of “products” and to create and test innovative problem solutions - these may include physical goods but also non-physical products such as services, policy instruments etc.

Role-play simulations are a transdisciplinary method for engaging diverse stakeholders beyond traditional policy- and decision-making communities in an informed and inclusive public debate around the governance of complex socio-environmental challenges. 

The AJUST Framework comprehensively outlines justice in its multiple aspects with the aim to facilitate justice assessment across diverse research and policy contexts. It is meant to be accessible across disciplines, powerful in terms of capacity to express a variety of justice ideas, and modular so researchers can select and deploy the aspects that are most appropriate or useful.

WADE provides easy access to the innovative dynamic metrics of aging developed at IIASA. These metrics take the changing characteristics of people into account, thereby providing policymakers, researchers, and educators with a view of aging appropriate for our changing demographic environment. All indicators are based on data from the UN’s World Population Prospects 2022 and 2024. They cover the period 1950 to 2100 and are disaggregated by region, subregion, and country. Both types of indicators can also be produced with user-defined data.

This application serves as an expansion of the Bayesian Reconstruction of Populations and Vital Rates by Educational Attainment (BayesEdu) project. Its objective is to integrate existing demographic data to generate accurate estimates of population sizes and vital rates categorized by educational attainment, while also considering associated uncertainties.

Update of the human core of the SSPs: Population and Human Capital Projections to 2100

The SPES Explorer – European Pressing Issues Dashboard is a web-based interactive application that visualises how citizens across European countries have perceived their most pressing national problems over time. It combines country-level maps with time-series charts and offers optional breakdowns by age group and gender. Users can explore, compare, and download harmonised indicators derived from Eurobarometer surveys. SPES examines productivity, equity, sustainability, participation and human security. The dashboard documents citizens’ perspectives by showing how people prioritise problems in their countries. It supports scenario building and policy dialogue by revealing shifts in perceived challenges that may motivate, accelerate, or constrain sustainable development pathways.

How can education shape Africa’s demographic and economic future? The African Human Capital Data Sheet 2026 presents new evidence on population trends by level of education, skills, and demographic transitions across the African continent.

In the IIASA Strategic Initiative fairSTREAM, we created a toolkit of participatory methods that can be adapted to facilitate co-production of knowledge. Co-produced knowledge integrates diverse scientific and social discourses to create relevant and legitimate opportunities in the context of complex problems. The TRUST Strategic Initiative, will expand this toolkit, highlighting its evolving nature.  

Scenarios as a decision-making tool help us to better understand the implications of a wide range of future possibilities considering existing development, strategies, and global interdependencies. Scenarios should be co-produced with their users, most often planner and decision makers.

These annual migrant flow estimates provide a comprehensive view of how people move between countries worldwide. Using advanced deep-learning techniques, the dataset combines official statistics, international migration databases, and innovative data sources to generate consistent and reliable estimates, including for countries with limited migration data. The result is a valuable resource for analyzing global migration trends and patterns over time.

DYNAMMICs is a macroeconomic growth modeling framework that quantifies the many co-benefits of DRR investment for multiple hazards.

A modeling framework for medium to long-term energy system planning, energy policy analysis, and scenario development

By applying multidimensional demographic models that incorporate differential fertility, mortality, migration, and educational attainment, IIASA's Population and Just Societies Program has developed the Demographic Data Sheets (DDS), which provide population projections by age, sex, and education for Europe, Asia, and the world. The DDS also present indicators on human capital and innovative measures of aging developed at IIASA, offering insights into demographic change across world regions and individual countries. These data products build on IIASA’s long-standing expertise in population forecasting and multidimensional demographic modeling.

A dataset that allows users to browse, select, visualize and download demographic data and population projections.

Three different scenarios for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, focusing on the goals that could impact fertility and mortality rates and thus population growth are now available for downloading.

IIASA researchers have developed multi-dimensional/multi-state models to study population dynamics at the global, regional, national and sub-national level.