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Participants in the inaugural Raiffa Academy return to universities, governments and international organizations with new tools, new collaborators and shared approaches.

What happens when an El Niño forecast reaches social media? Drawing on two recent studies, IIASA researchers Dmitry Erokhin and Nadejda Komendantova explore how the same climate information is discussed differently across online platforms and why those differences matter for climate communication and resilience.

At the inaugural Howard Raiffa Lecture, Avril Haines argued that behavioral science and decision analysis can help governments make more ethical decisions under pressure.

Citizen science is changing how research is done, but fragmented platforms and tools continue to limit its potential. Through the Horizon Europe-funded RIECS-Concept project, IIASA is helping to lay the foundations for a pan-European research infrastructure that will connect citizen science efforts across Europe and strengthen their scientific and societal impact.

Day two at the Raiffa Academy: IIASA Journalist-in-Residence Lisa Palmer on decision-analysis tools that navigate scientific uncertainty, competing interests and the realities of negotiation under pressure.

Lisa Palmer reflects on the Raiffa Academy which opened with a premise that many global challenges suffer from failures in decision-making, negotiation and implementation, not a lack of data.

Climate change does not affect everyone equally. Vulnerability to extreme heat is shaped by a combination of conditions in which people live and work. If climate adaptation is to reduce vulnerability rather than simply manage its consequences, it must address the underlying conditions that create vulnerability. This is particularly relevant for workers, whose experiences remain a major blind spot in climate adaptation despite their essential role in providing the goods and services society depends on.

Following his recent Science Parliament Lecture at IIASA, Prof. Subra Suresh sat down with us to discuss the future of innovation, science diplomacy, and international collaboration. Drawing on a career spanning academia, government, and global research leadership, he reflects on the importance of building trust across borders, communicating science effectively, and ensuring that emerging technologies benefit society.

What can millions of online conversations tell us about climate action? A new dashboard developed at IIASA uses AI to analyze social media discussions on food, mobility, and home energy choices, helping researchers track the social norms, barriers, and motivations that shape low-carbon lifestyles. By complementing traditional surveys with large-scale social media data, the LOW-AI project offers a new perspective on how climate-relevant behaviors are discussed and adopted in everyday life.

Anastasia Aldelina Lijadi, Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director General and Gender Equality and DEI Officer, highlights the IIASA Interaction Festival 2026 Open Mic Session, where research, creativity, and community came together.  

The Raiffa Academy, anchored at IIASA, is the hub of a global network of researchers, government officials, and decision analysts promoting the application of decision science and negotiation analysis methodologies in the development of solutions to complex, science-intensive policy challenges. In this personal reflection, Howard Raiffa's daughter, Judy Raiffa, shares the story of her father's transformative years at IIASA, the profound impact they had on his life's work, and the enduring vision he hoped would continue to shape the Institute's future.

From cat videos to automated science, Bettina Greenwell of the IIASA Communications Team explores the questions that lingered after a panel on AI and digitalization at the IIASA Interaction Festival.

IIASA Journalist-in-Residence, Lisa Palmer, reflects on discussions during last week's IIASA Interaction Festival, highlighting science diplomacy, systems analysis, and decision intelligence as pillars of the Institute's evolving plans.

IIASA researchers Pallav Purohit and Zbigniew Klimont examined the urgent challenge of air pollution in South Asia and the opportunities to address it through science-based policy and regional cooperation. In the run-up to the recent International Vienna Energy and Climate Forum, they drew on recent research and real-world examples to highlight how integrated approaches to energy, climate, and air quality can deliver cleaner air, improved health, and more resilient economies for nearly one billion people.

Ahead of the recent International Vienna Energy and Climate Forum, IIASA researchers Benigna Boza-Kiss and Shonali Pachauri explored the often-overlooked role of the building sector in achieving climate neutrality by 2050. Drawing on IIASA research, they highlight the urgent need to transform how buildings are designed, renovated, and used, emphasizing demand-side solutions, policy reform, and systemic change to avoid locking in emissions for decades to come.

In a new article published on The Conversation, IIASA researchers Gaurav Ganti and Joeri Rogelj, together with colleagues from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Ruben Prütz and Sabine Fuss, explore the complex trade-offs involved in planting trees to remove carbon from the atmosphere, highlighting how such efforts can either support or undermine environmental goals depending on how and where they are implemented.

The most recent edition of the Forest Talks webinar series – jointly hosted by the ForestNavigator project (coordinated by IIASA) together with the ForestPaths and PathFinder projects – brought together researchers, modelers, and national reporting experts to discuss advances in Earth observation (EO) for forest monitoring and greenhouse gas inventory support across Europe. 

Cyberattacks, blackouts, natural disasters: in a world where physical and digital systems are becoming ever more tightly intertwined, disruptions can quickly paralyze entire infrastructures. At a recent public lecture co-hosted by IIASA and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), renowned computer scientist and mathematician Dimitris E. Simos spoke about these vulnerabilities. In this interview, he explains why our systems are particularly susceptible to attacks, how chain reactions occur, and what each of us can do to improve security.

The IIASA Urban Futures Hub is a cutting-edge research initiative dedicated to studying and assessing how cities and urban systems can lead climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts from local to global scales. The Hub regularly brings together experts from various disciplines within and beyond the Institute to collaborate on assessing cities and climate change across diverse domains and scales. IIASA researchers Leila Niamir and Merle Quade share insights from the initiative's latest expert workshop.

As climate risks intensify, fostering community resilience has become a global priority but a fundamental question remains for practice and policy: how can resilience be defined, measured, and proven to inform implementation? Together with the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, IIASA researchers have spent more than a decade developing and scientifically validating a universally-applicable framework to measure community resilience, turning a concept into an evidence-based tool to guide real-world implementation in the most vulnerable communities across the globe.