IIASA and the Korean partners at Konkuk University will collaborate on the development of a global integrated assessment modeling system for climate-air pollutants management focused on Northeast Asia under the GAINS (air quality model) and MESSAGEix (energy system model).
Air quality and climate change are closely linked regarding their impact on human health. Energy-related activities (e.g., power plants, steel production, car travel) generate air pollutant emission, which in turn poses a severe issue for public health. As scientists call for substantial changes in the energy and end-use sectors (industry, buildings, transport) in order to achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement, there is the need for a common framework to understand the impact of climate change mitigation measures and air quality policies on health issues (e.g. mortality, morbidity).
Funded by the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation of Konkuk University, the GUIDE project will develop a global MESSAGEix-GAINS model for climate-air pollutant assessment and management, with a focus on Northeast Asia. Joint work between Konkuk University and IIASA will be conducted on harmonizing common elements of IAM design to enable a comparison of scenario results between the GUIDE-Global/Local and MESSAGEix-GAINS modeling framework and, by extension, to similar analysis conducted by other researchers.
The multiple-scale development and implementation of the updated and newly developed tools in the project, will allow to work with regionalized SSPs reflecting better the local situation and providing results and insights more directly related to local and regional policy actors. The results will help future air quality policy implementation.