Article: News
11 March 2022
The systemic and uncertain risks facing the world today can have cascading impacts across systems and sectors. A new briefing note on systemic risk highlights that an integrated perspective that incorporates the inherently complex nature of climate-related hazards, vulnerability, exposure and impacts, is crucial to better understanding and responding to systemic risk.
Research Project
Decades of insufficient action (despite multiple scientific warnings) have heightened risks of irreversible tipping points in the Earth systems. Urgent and critical actions are needed to avert societal collapse. Phase-2 of the Transformations within Reach (TwR) is intended to provide an action-oriented synthesis for catalyzing societal transformations toward sustainability.
Article: News
28 February 2022
Human-induced climate change is causing dangerous and widespread disruption in nature and affecting the lives of billions of people around the world, despite efforts to reduce the risks. People and ecosystems least able to cope are being hardest hit, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, released today.
Article: Other
29 November 2021
Options Winter 2021: The integrity of traditional reindeer husbandry in Finland is under threat. In a study that analyzed the perceptions of herders on the drivers of change in reindeer management, IIASA researcher Mia Landauer and colleagues hoped to amplify local voices so they can be included in future policy decisions.
Event
New Delhi, India / Virtual
As a premier event in the global adaptation spectrum, Adaptation Futures is a unique platform to facilitate dialogues towards action oriented solutions from a diverse range of stakeholders that includes academia, practitioners, scientists and policy makers from across the world.
Event
IIASA
The INQUIMUS workshop has been postponed to Spring 2022. IIASA’s Population and Just Societies (POPJUS) Program together with the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program will host the INQUIMUS workshop series entitled "Transformational risk management and Loss & Damage: What are suitable approaches for assessing climate-related (residual) risks?". The workshop will focus on the pressing issue of climate-related risks that may go beyond social and physical limits for adaptation.
Event
Virtual event
Faced with increasing climate-related risks, decision-makers across the world need to strengthen and transform climate risk management approaches before limits to adaptation are met. IIASA Research Group Leader and risk and resilience expert Reinhard Mechler will discuss ways to deal with climate-related existential risk, along with key take-aways from his discussions at COP26 in Glasgow.
Article: Other
17 November 2021
Options Winter 2021: Human activity is the main cause of climate change. It is also people who endure the worst of its impacts. It is a matter of utmost urgency that people are part of the solution.
Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA)
Systemic Risk and Resilience (SYRR)
Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE)
Sustainable Service Systems (S3)
Integrated Assessment and Climate Change (IACC)
Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions (TISS)
Population and Just Societies (POPJUS)
Migration and Sustainable Development (MIG)
Sweden
Article: News
10 November 2021
As the impacts of climate change become more severe and limits to adaptation draw near, vulnerable communities will need different kinds of finance to build resilience and transform how they protect themselves. Work by IIASA researchers has culminated in a new policy brief, which lays out a finance framework for such climate risk and provides relevant model insight to inform international debates around adaptation and Loss and Damage.
Research Project
A multidisciplinary consortium of leading European universities, research institutes, companies, NGOs, and practitioners in the field of disaster risk reduction has started a major EU-funded project called MYRIAD-EU to improve our understanding, assessment, and management of disasters caused by combinations of different kinds of natural hazards (e.g. climate, hydrological, geological, and biological hazards).
Research Project
'Risk-layering' strategies to reduce, retain and transfer disaster risk not only protect productive assets and lives, but implemented appropriately, could yield a number of additional benefits that could enhance wellbeing and resilience. Yet, conventional static macroeconomic models are not capable of analysing how alternative fiscal resource allocations to risk-layering options may affect developing countries’ growth trajectories under the impact of climate change.
Research Project
Dynamic Global Vegetation Models (DGVMs) are invaluable for understanding the biosphere. However, as currently implemented by the international research community, these models suffer from a challenging accumulation of uncertainty. This project aims to address this problem by developing the foundations of a new generation of models centered on a “missing law” – adaptation and optimization principles rooted in natural selection.
Research Project
Urban metabolism is a model to study the flow of energy and resources as they enter cities, how they are used and consumed, and how they exist cities as wastes. By studying urban metabolism, we can get a better understanding of how resources are used and ways to reduce negative environmental impact. As the fraction of people living in cities continue to expand around the world, urban metabolism analysis can help decision makers develop cities to become resource efficient, climate friendly, resilient and equitable.