Article: News
16 October 2017
Joanne Linnerooth-Bayer started as a research assistant at IIASA in 1972 and today is the Risk and Resilience (RISK) Program Director and Dean of the IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP). She shares her story as a risk researcher at IIASA over the last 45 years.
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17 February 2017
Impact Sheet #17, February 2017. Food, energy, water, and land: secure provision of these resources is essential for the survival of humankind. Moreover, they are closely linked, and policies that alter one sector can have large impacts on the others. IIASA has developed methods to improve integrated management and help policymakers design robust, sustainable policies, which take into account trade-offs and synergies between all four sectors. This work has fed into national policy in Ukraine.
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16 February 2017
Impact Sheet #16, February 2017. IIASA analysis has formed the backbone of European air pollution policy since the 1980s, including the latest agreement which became law in December 2016. Scientists at the institute are now applying their expertise to the urgent air pollution situation in other parts of the world.
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14 February 2017
Impact Sheet #14, February 2017. IIASA played a significant role in bringing under control toxic air pollutants that damage human health and the environment. The Regional Acidification Information and Simulation (RAINS) model, developed at IIASA, was at the center of international environmental negotiations to achieve cleaner air in Europe at lowest cost.
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13 February 2017
Impact Sheet #13, February 2017. The IIASA Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) brings talented PhD students to Laxenburg, Austria, to work on independent research projects in collaboration with top researchers in their fields. IIASA also runs a thriving postdoctorate program and many capacity-building events and workshops for scientists and policymakers worldwide.
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14 November 2016
Policy Brief #14, November 2016. Two temperatures feature prominently in the Paris Climate Agreement: 1.5°C and 2°C. New studies from IIASA reveal substantially different climate impacts under these two targets and provide a clearer understanding of the challenges and benefits of aiming low on global warming goals.
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13 October 2016
Policy Brief #13, October 2016. To overcome pressures on water quantity and quality in the Rio Grande/Bravo the 1944 Water Treaty between Mexico and the USA must be adapted, taking full advantage of the institutional flexibility to include environmental sustainability.
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12 January 2015
Impact Sheet #12, January 2015. IIASA plays a leading role in shaping the annual Emission Gap Reports, launched by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2010. These reports assess whether emissions pledges from countries during the international climate negotiations are on track to limit temperature increase to 2ºC or less this century. The reports appear each year to inform governments and the international policy community about the possible gap that needs to be closed in order or the world to follow a globally sustainable pathway toward wider objectives, such as the green economy.
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13 November 2014
Impact Sheet #2, November 2014. Natural disasters, particularly in developing countries, can swamp governments’ ability to support the relief and reconstruction process. Through its catastrophe simulation (CATSIM) model, IIASA has helped many governments to identify their financial and economic resilience and design efficient and appropriate risk-management and -financing strategies, putting governments into a position to proactively tackle the increasing burdens from natural disasters.
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13 November 2014
Imact Sheet #3, November 2014. Overfishing not only reduces the size of fish populations, it can alter their actual gene pool. In 1998 IIASA began researching fisheries-induced evolution with the aim of i) developing methodological tools to evaluate the evolutionary and ecological consequences of overfishing and ii) using resulting insights to identify evolutionarily sustainable management strategies.
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13 November 2014
Impact Sheet #4, November 2014. IIASA launched the GAINS model in 2006 to explore the synergies and trade-offs between control of local and regional air pollution and mitigation of global greenhouse gases (GHGs). GAINS is used to analyze the future socioeconomic drivers of emissions, emission control options, the chemical transformation and dispersion of pollutants in the atmosphere, and ensuing human health and environmental impacts.
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13 November 2014
Impact Sheet #5, November 2014. IIASA has developed an integrated modeling cluster built around the Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM) which integrates the agricultural, bioenergy, and forestry sectors and draws on comprehensive socioeconomic and geospatial data. It is integrated with several other models developed by IIASA and partners.
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13 November 2014
Impact Sheet #6, November 2014. In 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) asked the scientific community to develop new scenarios for the Fifth Assessment Report. IIASA scientists contributed to developing two new sets of scenarios: the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)—four pathways for emissions, concentrations, and radiative forcing; and the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs)—five possible paths human societies could follow over the next century. The RCP and SSP databases are hosted by IIASA.
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13 November 2014
Impact Sheet #7, November 2014. MESSAGE is a IIASA modeling framework for medium- to long-term energy system planning, energy policy analysis, and scenario development. It provides a flexible framework for the comprehensive assessment of major energy challenges. It has been applied extensively to developing scenarios for large global research programs, such as the latest three assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 2012 Global Energy Assessment.
Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE)
Integrated Assessment and Climate Change (IACC)
Pollution Management (PM)
Sustainable Service Systems (S3)
Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS)
Model for Energy Supply Strategy Alternatives and their General Environmental Impact (MESSAGEix)
Global Biosphere Management Model (GLOBIOM)