Citizen science is increasingly recognized as an important vehicle for democratizing science and promoting the goal of universal and equitable access to scientific data and information. IIASA researchers actively contribute to the development of this scientific approach and have recently published a primer aimed at both established and aspiring practitioners of citizen science to highlight key issues and how to address them.
In the IIASA Strategic Initiative fairSTREAM, we created a toolkit of participatory methods that can be adapted to facilitate co-production of knowledge. Co-produced knowledge integrates diverse scientific and social discourses to create relevant and legitimate opportunities in the context of complex problems. The TRUST Strategic Initiative, will expand this toolkit, highlighting its evolving nature.
Two-stage optimal control models are a useful tool to model stochastic shocks, which have the potential to significantly alter the characteristics of a dynamic system, but cannot be controlled by the decision maker. Applications can be found in a wide range of topics including health and environmental economics. The Julia package recently received and update to version v0.2.0.
Current severe heatwaves that will likely increase in severity and frequency in the future are driving a rise in the use of air conditioners, threatening the environment with their high energy consumption and refrigerants with high warming potential. A new study finds that switching to propane as a refrigerant could lessen the global temperature increase from space cooling.
Floods are a pressing environmental hazard, causing loss of lives, economic losses, and livelihood impacts around the globe. Recent flood events, such as the devastating floods that hit several European countries including Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands in July 2021, have revealed significant gaps in flood risk understanding, awareness, and communication, as well as in flood resilience. As climate change continues to spiral, the risk of disastrous floods is increasing across the globe.
Fairness is thought to be one of the key factors boosting support for much needed ambitious climate policies. A recent IIASA study offers practical ways of exploring climate policy options guided by different approaches to fairness. This will allow the identification of policies that, by virtue of their fairness, can be viable candidates for compromises emerging from climate negotiations.