IIASA and Beihang University prolong collaboration to mitigate air pollution in China

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution is responsible for around two million deaths per year in China. Seeking to drive positive change toward resolving this problem, China’s Beihang University (BUAA) partnered with IIASA back in 2018 and has been using the IIASA GAINS model to inform policy and improve air quality.

Recently, a delegation from BUAA visited IIASA to review and prolong cooperation agreements between the two organizations. The delegation was headed by BUAA President Yunpeng Wang, accompanied by the Director of International Relations Department Weng Jingnong, Dean of School of Economics and Management Fan Ying, and other senior officials. From the IIASA side, they were welcomed by IIASA Deputy Director General Karen Lips, Pollution Management Research Group Leader Zig Klimont, and IIASA Researcher Shaohui Zhang, acting as a contact point for this partnership.

“Having a tailored version of GAINS installed at a national university server provides a lot of additional analytical capacity. It will be used not only by our colleagues at BUAA, but also by other Chinese universities,” says Zhang. “Through this partnership we hope to increase the impact GAINS can have on energy and air-pollution policies in China while broadening our understanding of global challenges, such as climate change.”

Following a brief introduction and a discussion of past and potential future collaborations, the two parties signed a MoU, focused on a variety of cooperation opportunities, including maintenance of the GAINS-Beihang model on a BUAA server, joint workshops, etc.

GAINS provides an authoritative framework for assessing strategies that reduce emissions of multiple air pollutants and greenhouse gases at least cost and minimize their negative effects on human health and ecosystems. GAINS-Beihang is a tailored version of the model, which is primarily focused on solving environmental and climate problems in China with a cost-effective approach. It enables analysis of different future scenarios and can help to design air quality improvement strategies at national and provincial scales.