Nadejda Komendantova, Research Group Leader of the Cooperation and Transformative Governance (CAT) Group at IIASA, co-chaired a landmark track at the International Conference on Resilient Systems 2026 at the Delft University of Technology, titled "Complex Adaptive Social Systems and Natural Hazard Resilience: Application, Methods, and Future Directions." This event served as key dissemination of results from IIASA's contributions to the PARATUS project, showcasing advanced systems analysis for disaster resilience.
IIASA researcher Nadya Komendantova participated in a side event to the 2026 UN Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs, which took place at United Nations Headquarters in New York on the 7th May 2026. The event, organized by International Association for the Advancement of Innovative Approaches to Global Challenges (IAAI GloCha), focused on Global Challenges Action ID and Global Challenges Action Registry solutions for youth-led action, healthy communities, and climate-resilient development through digital public infrastructure.
Unusually warm periods could have a link to an increased risk of intimate partner violence against women, according to a new IIASA-led study covering 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The findings highlight how rising temperatures may compound existing risks of violence, with effects varying between demographic groups.
Schoolchildren are the stakeholders that will be benefit from the city not only for today, but also for a long time in the future. As such it is crucial to include them in designing their environment. They have a fresh eye on spotting the issues and can think creatively and at the same time critically to come up with ideas to develop their environment. Hop & Mop project is aimed to work with the schoolchildren to design mini-block prototype in the streets near their schools.
Dmitry Erokhin, PhD, Research Scholar at IIASA, presents a poster on the emotionalization of political discourse at the Day of Parliamentary Research 2026 at the Austrian Parliament. His study analyzes public comments on YouTube videos related to major Austrian political parties and applies sentiment and topic analysis to examine how emotions, facts, polarization, and toxicity shape online political debate. The findings provide insights into how digital media influences public perceptions of parties and democratic processes, and how parliaments can better respond to emotionally charged political communication.
The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) launched a new report exploring opportunities to advance carbon farming in Greater Central Asia at a UNCCD COP17 side event in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
Every US$1 invested in tackling climate change and air pollution together can generate around US$15 in economic benefits, according to a report published today by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). This is higher than tackling climate and clean air separately and includes both market and non-market economic gains.
As countries compete for skilled workers and grapple with aging populations and labor shortages, understanding who is moving across borders is increasingly important. A new study provides the first global dataset of immigration composition disaggregated simultaneously by age, sex, and educational attainment, offering a new basis for tracking brain gain and brain drain and improving population projections.
The Indicators of Global Climate Change (IGCC) dashboard presents the latest evidence on emissions, warming, and other changes across the climate system in an accessible visual format. This is the first year that the climate dashboard has been maintained by IIASA, with the support of the Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Global temperature rise is set to cross 1.5°C within the next few years, pushing climate risks to increasingly dangerous heights. However, it is still possible to limit the magnitude and duration of overshoot and bring temperatures back down, according to a new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, to which several IIASA researchers contributed as authors.
How can private gardens help support biodiversity in Austria? The new IIASA citizen science project G/ArtenLeben brings science and gardening practice together. At three G/ArtenCafés in Lower Austria, hobby gardeners are invited to contribute their knowledge and experience to research and work alongside scientists to explore how gardening can help biodiversity thrive.
Taking place 24–25 November 2026 at Tsinghua University in Beijing, the conference is co-hosted by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and Tsinghua University, and will bring together leading researchers, policymakers, innovators, and communicators to advance the global dialogue on overshoot pathways and responses.
As climate impacts such as heatwaves, floods, and fires are intensifying worldwide, there is an urgent demand for information on how to respond. IIASA researchers and partners have developed a new tool that meets that need, integrating climate drivers, risks, and adaptation options in one framework grounded in IPCC science. It turns authoritative global climate assessments into guidance practitioners can use.
IIASA researcher suggests a fundamentally different way for governments to plan for the future: using population as a common framework to connect health, education, food, jobs, housing, social protection, and climate risk. The approach integrates demographic data with sectoral planning to help governments make more coordinated, evidence-based decisions and improve population wellbeing.
As Austria experienced record-breaking temperatures on 4 August 2026, with more than 50 weather stations reporting all-time highs, IIASA Director General Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber joined Austrian public radio Ö1's Mittagsjournal to discuss what these extremes mean for the future, as well as why society must prepare for a much hotter climate.
Corporate climate spending now steers trillions of dollars in transition finance worldwide. Does it drive genuine climate action? Research shows that accounting flexibility alone can make a company's reported emissions vary by roughly a factor of two – enough to appear either as a climate leader or a laggard. A new Perspective in Nature Sustainability proposes developing industry-specific net-zero blueprints to close that gap.