The 6th Viennese Talks on Resilience and Networks is co-organized by IIASA and FASresearch. In an effort to support a convergence of ideas between systems ecology, complexity, ecomimcry, sustainability, networks, resilience and "building back better", authors of the recently published book “A New Ecology: Systems Perspective” are meeting in this workshop to provide insight into ecological principles.
IIASA researchers have used Sentinel 1 satellite imagery from the European Space Agency to produce a map of the extent and year of detection of oil palm plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand that will help policymakers and other stakeholders understand trends in oil palm expansion to inform landscape-level planning.
By applying multidimensional demographic models that incorporate differential fertility, mortality, migration, and educational attainment, IIASA's Population and Just Societies Program has developed the Demographic Data Sheets (DDS), which provide population projections by age, sex, and education for Europe, Asia, and the world. The DDS also present indicators on human capital and innovative measures of aging developed at IIASA, offering insights into demographic change across world regions and individual countries. These data products build on IIASA’s long-standing expertise in population forecasting and multidimensional demographic modeling.
The linkage algorithms solve the problem of linking models, e.g. sectorial and/or regional, into an inter-sectorial inter-regional integrated model. Linkage enables to avoid “hard linking” of models in a single code, which saves the programming time and enables parallel distributed computations of individual models instead of a large scale integrated model. Models linkage preserves the structure of the original models taking into account critically important details, which are usually missing in aggregate models.
Stochastic Quasi-Gradient (SQG) methods have been developed for solving general optimization problems without exact calculation of objective function and constraints (let alone of their derivatives). SQG methods enable a sequential revision of approximate solutions towards the optimal using newly acquired information on the system, obtained via either direct on-line observations or(and) simulations.
Can cooperation across sectors and countries help to achieve sustainable development? How do stakeholders in the Indus and Zambezi basins envision the future and how can they make that future a reality? IIASA researchers looked into these questions as part of a large-scale initiative with international partners.
World Water Day held annually on 22 March, celebrates water and raises awareness of the 2.2 billion people living without access to safe water. It is about taking action to tackle the global water crisis. A core focus of World Water Day is to support the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: Water and sanitation for all by 2030.
IIASA researchers worked with local stakeholders from the East African Community to explore and co-develop regional water scenarios that can enhance understanding of the up- and downstream water sector interactions in the extended Lake Victoria Basin to facilitate rational water resource planning.
Solar energy is a clean, renewable source of electricity that could potentially play a significant part in fulfilling the world’s energy requirements, but there are still some challenges to fully capitalizing on this potential. Researchers looked into some of the issues that hamper the uptake of solar energy and proposed different policies to encourage the use of this technology.