Options Summer 2020: John Handmer, Senior Science Adviser in the IIASA Risk and Resilience Program and Emeritus Professor with RMIT University’s School of Science in Australia, writes about the devastating impact of the Australian wildfires.
Ralph L. Keeney is a professor and consultant about decision-making. He was a research scholar at IIASA from 1974-76, where he and Howard Raiffa finished their book Decisions with Multiple Objectives. Here he describes his most recent book, Give Yourself a Nudge: Helping Smart People Make Smarter Personal and Business Decisions, and how it can impact you.
Options Summer 2020: Q&A with Alena Rybkina, Vice-President of the Committee on Data of the International Science Council (CODATA) and Deputy Director for Development of the Geophysical Center at the Russian Academy of Sciences.
A new commentary in the journal One Earth highlights not only climate-related risks to the global food system, such as drought and floods, but also exposes the coronavirus pandemic as a shock to the system that has led to food crises in many parts of the world. To address the challenges of a globally interconnected food system, a systems approach is required.
Many countries are failing to comply with the non-binding commitments of the Paris Agreement, making it increasingly clear that we have to reconsider how to ensure collective action to limit global warming to less than 2°C above preindustrial levels. A new IIASA-led study supports a different approach to designing an international climate agreement that would incentivize countries to cooperate.
Options Summer 2020: Thomas Schinko joined the institute as a Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) participant in 2014. He is currently the IIASA Risk and Resilience Deputy Program Director.
Options Summer 2020: Researchers from IIASA and Israel have customized the IIASA MESSAGE and GLOBIOM models to Israel’s unique context, to provide Israeli policymakers with useful options and analyses as they plan for the future.
Options Summer 2020: IIASA teamed up with Indonesian partners under the RESTORE+ project to establish a national platform for data collection campaigns through the Urundata crowdsourcing platform, thus allowing Indonesians to be more involved in efforts to restore forests and landscapes in the country.
Options Summer 2020: IIASA researchers explored how cities can enhance governance around climate change adaptation using the recent Cape Town water crisis as a case study.
Universal education - particularly of women - has been a fundamental driver of human development and progress. The changes that education brings could also determine the future path of humanity, argues IIASA World Population Program Director Wolfgang Lutz in a new publication with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.
Options Summer 2020: IIASA researchers modeled complex system linkages that affect food security in South Africa and found that sustained growth in the country’s agricultural sector is heavily dependent on careful planning and water use for irrigation.
The aim of the first consultation of the Advisory Group “Emerging trade routes between Europe and Asia” scenario-building project is to collect critical comments and suggestions of the Advisory Group Members to the envisaged methodology of the project. Several candidate global scenario frameworks pre-selected by the project team are discussed. An attempt is made to prioritize one framework to serve as an overarching framework within which regional scenarios focusing on shipping in the Arctic are positioned.
Options Summer 2020: Brazil could potentially expand biofuel production without significantly affecting food production or increasing adverse land use impacts and deforestation, according to a recent IIASA study.
Tadeusz Bara-Slupski discusses the Artificial Intelligence for Good initiative’s recent collaboration with IIASA to develop an interactive COVID-19 data visualization tool.
Options Summer 2020: IIASA researchers used systems analysis methods to measure trade interdependencies between US states and found that the country’s current food supply chain is often not optimized for using available natural resources.
Options Summer 2020: According to IIASA research, appropriate indicators are needed to characterize the sensitivity of ecosystems and help inform effects-based emission reduction policies to ensure surface water recovery from acidification by 2050.
World Population Deputy Program Director Raya Muttarak was invited by Aalborg University to give an online keynote lecture on the demographic perspective on migration challenges.
Options Summer 2020: An analysis of China’s iron and steel industry highlighted that the tradeoffs and co-benefits of energy and resource efficiency, climate, and air quality must be taken into account when designing plans and policies to achieve multiple targets.