Research Project
Yoma is a digital platform that aims to support African youth on a “learning to earning journey” with three impact areas: digital skills, social change & environmental impact. The platform plans to leverage a token economy as part of an incentive system for youth action that tackles social and environmental challenges. The project will use IIASA citizen science apps to encourage measurement and monitoring of youth-led environmental impact initiatives.
Research Project
The project Data-driven understanding of low-carbon lifestyles (LOW-AI) aims at using social media data to understand behavior change with respect to low-carbon lifestyles. In order to limit global warming to a safe level of 1.5℃, individual action is required. LOW-AI deploys social media data to monitor lifestyle changes and attitudes towards lifestyle changes in the global population, developing tools that can be implemented with a higher geographical reach and are less costly than traditional approaches.
Research Project
PHOENIX (Human Mobility, Global Challenges and Resilience in an Age of Social Stress) is a Belmont Forum funded project that aims to examine how Global Changes - including environmental and climate changes, demographic changes, changing consumption patterns, energy and land-use, developments in the politics of food and mental health, and socio-cultural transformations - impact mobility.
Research Project
GRANULAR is a project that will last for four years, involving different disciplines and countries, with the aim of creating new datasets, tools, and methods to better understand rural areas. By doing this, we hope to gain new insights into the unique characteristics, dynamics, and drivers of change in rural areas. Using this newly generated and collected knowledge, we aim to help those involved in rural development to design place-based policies that are specifically tailored to the needs of each individual area. Ultimately, GRANULAR hopes to support rural actors in their efforts to promote sustainable territorial development.
Research Project
Coal, the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, is a major contributor to anthropogenic carbon emissions and climate change. Coal mining and combustion are also a leading cause for premature mortality due to local air pollution. On the other hand, coal is also central to many regional and local economies that rely on its mining, transportation, energy production and exports. With changing climate and rapidly depleting carbon budgets, the urgency for coal phase-out has become more prominent and many regional economies are under pressure to transition away from coal in a time bound manner.
Research Project
Climate change (CC) is undeniably responsible for the increase in climate-related disasters affecting Alpine communities. These phenomena are often the result of compound events, a combination of multiple climate-related hazards that contribute to socio-ecological risks. One of the key drivers of the increased vulnerability are changes in forest ecosystems.
Forests provide essential ecosystem services that support human well-being and play a critical role in the mitigation of CC, but their health and stability are also threatened by CC.
Therefore, MOSAIC focuses on hazard-resilient and sustainable protective forest management coping with climate changes’ multiple dimensions, which is essential for managing climate-related risks. In order to support regional and Alpine climate action plans, the project aims to collect, harmonize and share data, models on Alpine climate-related disasters and trends. The project partners strive to raise awareness among foresters, risk managers, decision makers and the public through an Alpine network of forest living labs.
Research Project
Even though Africa is home to some of the best renewable resources on the planet, almost half of the continent's population does not have access to modern energy. The project OpenMod4Africa will support providing access to clean, affordable energy to everyone by creating an open modelling toolbox for long-term energy transition pathways for Africa.
Research Project
The FireLinks COST Action, also known as "Fire in the Earth System: Science & Society," aims to establish a robust and interconnected network of scientists and practitioners dedicated to forest fire research and land management. The project brings together experts from various disciplines, including fire dynamics, fire risk management, fire effects on vegetation, fauna, soil, and water, as well as socio-economic, historical, geographical, political perception, and land management approaches.
Research Project
The overarching objective of DISCC-AT is to inform decision makers in Austria about group-specific social vulnerabilities to key climate risks and thereby to enable the implementation of just and cost-effective adaptation measures as well as to in-crease adaptive capacities of private households where most needed.
Research Project
Ecosystem degradation and conversion now poses severe threat to the biodiversity, habitation, and food security of Kazakhstan and other countries of the Asian Dryland Belt (ADB) region. Without intervention, there is risk that a positive feedback loop could be triggered which worsens degradation by increasing the need for harsher chemicals and fertilisers to maintain yield. Sequestration of carbon into degraded land is a rapidly advancing field of research. Could this be a solution toward land restoration in the ADB?