Research Project
The Global Shield initiative, a collaboration between the G7 and V20, aims to revolutionize Climate and Disaster Risk Finance and Insurance (CDRFI) support. Led by Germany in 2022, it focuses on enhancing pre-arranged finance, country ownership, and evidence-based gap analysis. The Global Shield Solutions Platform (GSSP) provides technical assistance and financial support to countries, addressing protection gaps through risk assessments and capacity development.
Research Project
Natural and man-made disasters are causing huge losses, which are likely to rise due to the risk ignorance, population and development growth in disaster-prone areas, as well as interdependencies among sectors, regions, locations, increasing current and future exposure and vulnerability. The interdependencies among systems and regions involve interactions between socio-economic, natural, technological systems. They resemble complex networks connected through various “balance” relations (supply-demand, input-output, inflow-outflow) at different levels. Disruption of such networks can trigger systemic risks associated with critical imbalances, exceedances of vital thresholds, which affect provision of goods (food, energy, water), environmental norms, endanger population and developments, thus undermining socio-economic-food-energy-water NEXUS security (SEFEW NEXUS security) at local, regional, national levels with possible global spillovers.
Co-development of integrated and multi-disciplinary advanced system analyses and decision support methods and tools is essential for stakeholders and experts to build up regional resilience through timely investments into disaster preparedness and response measures enabling to properly mitigate and adapt to systemic risks of all kinds.
Research Project
Recent technological and scientific advancements have improved our understanding of natural hazards. However, despite efforts, natural disasters continue to take a heavy toll on communities, resulting in loss of life, environmental impact, and economic damage. The MEDiate project aims to use a resilient-informed, service-oriented, and people-centered approach for developing a disaster risk management decision-support system by considering multiple interacting natural hazards and their cascading effects, changes in hazards, vulnerability, and exposure.
Research Project
AGORA project fosters European climate resilience through collaboration and community-based adaptation. It co-designs and implements tailored solutions, engages stakeholders, and promotes climate justice, empowerment, and societal transformation aiming for a climate resilient Europe with innovative approaches and effective policies.
Research Project
CORE addresses SU-DRS01-2018-2019-2020 call for disaster-resilient societies. It analyzes natural & anthropogenic risks (earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, floods, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, Covid-19). It focuses on vulnerable populations, preserving dignity & autonomy during emergencies. It investigates social media's ethical impact on autonomy, dignity, equity, & well-being as well as aims to provide recommendations for improved preparedness & resilience, considering human and social characteristics.
Research Project
While the buildings sector is directly responsible for about 10% of Austria’s anthropogenic CO2 emissions, its carbon footprint is 3 to 4 times larger than that if indirect and life-cycle emissions are considered (dependent on the accounting method). In that regard, Austria’s building sector is representative of building sectors of other countries in the European Union. Moreover, the CO2 emissions attributed to the global building stock are structured in a similar way. Thus, due to its interlinkages with other sectors (notably energy generation and industry), building stock provides effective leverage points that are of critical importance for global and national mitigation efforts, and for a successful transition to carbon-neutral economy.
Research Project
The Citizens for Copernicus (C4C) project, coordinated by the IIASA Novel Data Ecosystems for Sustainability Research Group in the Advancing Systems Analysis Program, aims to develop an Austrian citizen science data component to bridge the in situ data gap for more reliable forest mapping with Copernicus data. The project focuses on the combined use of citizen science and satellite images to develop AI models for forest resource (biomass/carbon) monitoring.
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
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
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
ECOANTITRUST is a transdisciplinary initiative aiming to offer valuable perspectives and insights for effective transformation of BRICS competition policy and regulation toward cultivating diverse and competitive digital economies and foster digital innovations in the best interests of societies.
Research Project
Directed aims to improve the interoperability of multiple European climate risk assessment and planning tools and bring them together in a manageable system (a data fabric) that enables better disaster risk assessment and management by European disaster protection authorities and first responders.
Using ‘Real World Labs’ to critically analyse and improve current work-flows and governance linked to disaster risk management and disaster risk reduction.
Promoting a multi-risk perspective on climate change adaptation by considering the impacts of floods, droughts, heatwaves, forest fires and storms.
Research Project
There is a need for a radical step-up in the attention we pay to current and future climate impacts and associated efforts. Despite inspiring examples of adaptation solutions, stand-alone risk reduction projects that tackle issues through direct or existing policy levers are common practice. Adopting a systemic, transformative approach is advocated by the Mission Adaptation and European Green Deal. P2R takes an innovative systemic approach to regional climate resilience; one indivisible from Europe’s future economic and social development, intersecting with net zero commitments, and demanding a markedly different approach from the one adopted so far.
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?
Research Project
EYE-CLIMA will support National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (NGHGIs), and thus the Paris Agreement, by developing independent observation-based methods for verifying emission estimates of greenhouse gases and the aerosol species, black carbon. Independent verification is much needed and is recognized by the IPCC in their 2019 refinement of the guidelines for NGHGIs.
Research Project
DECIPHER (DECIsion-making framework and Processes for Holistic Evaluation of enviRonmental and climate policies) is an EU Commission funded project that aims to embed risk, opportunity, resilience and feasibility dimensions into the economic methods that support decision-making in order to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and legitimacy of climate and environmental policies.