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IIASA and RITE co-organized an expert meeting in the framework of the Energy Demand changes Induced by Technological and Social innovations (EDITS) network to further the interdisciplinary dialogue in conceptualizing, analyzing, policy making, and modeling of energy demand and its interlinkages to climate change mitigation and the SDGs.

Despite successes in reducing poverty globally in the last two decades, almost one billion people are still living without access to reliable and affordable electricity, which in turn negatively affects health and welfare, and impedes sustainable development. Knowing where these people are is crucial if aid and infrastructure are to reach them. A new IIASA-led study proposes a novel method to estimate global economic wellbeing using nighttime satellite images.

This two-day hybrid event is organized by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) to celebrate IIASA 50th Anniversary.

IIASA is proud to announce that Energy, Climate, and Environment Program Director, Keywan Riahi has been elected as a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) ̶ Austria’s largest non-university research and science institution.

Researchers from the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program found that agricultural efforts in downstream countries in Central Asia, traditionally hampered by a lack of water for irrigation during the summer growing season, would be significantly boosted with a “dual water and energy storage scheme”, which also paves the way for high shares of renewable energy generation in the region.

In 2021, the fairSTREAM project was selected as one of the first high impact Strategic Initiatives at IIASA. Below is an update on what the project has achieved to date.

Senior IIASA researcher and Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) Scientific Coordinator, Brian Fath, has received the 2022 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in research, scholarship, and creativity.

The project, Just Transitions to Net-zero Carbon Emissions for All (JustTrans4All), was selected in 2021 as one of the first two IIASA Strategic Initiatives. The project kicked off in September 2021 and aims to contribute to novel analyses of transition pathways that reflect justice concerns.  

Colleagues from IIASA Water Security Research Group (WAT) host a special workshop with design students, to foster conversation between designers and scientists.

IIASA lead authors from Working Groups II and III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report will present the main findings at an event co-organized with the Climate Change Center Austria, the Austrian Federal Ministry of Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology, and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The event will take place in German.

Nadejda Komendantova who leads the IIASA Cooperation and Transformative Governance (CAT) Research Group, has been invited to be the presenter of the next seminar of the Oxford Energy series. Her talk titled “Participatory Governance and Social Factors in the Energy Transition” addresses the question what is the current potential for polycentric governance and the opportunities for the co-production of energy policy given the general public’s existing levels of awareness and willingness to participate. 

IIASA Water Security Research Group (WAT) colleagues led two training workshop sessions on water modeling in April. The sessions were hosted by the Grand Water Research Institute, in Haifa, Israel.  

In his early years, IIASA researcher Michael Thompson was a Himalayan mountaineer. Navigating risk in the mountains has defined his view on risk more generally, thereby influencing his research on environment and development in Nepal.

There is an increasing awareness in the scientific community that open-source scientific software is an integral requirement for open science, increasing transparency, and the reproducibility of research findings. Two manuscripts by IIASA researchers presenting state-of-the-art developments furthering these goals were recently recognized by the scientific journals where these works were published.