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.
The annual UN 2020 Sustainable Development Goal 7 Energy Tracking Report is being launched along with 2020 Sustainable Development Goal 7 policy briefs, to which several IIASA researchers have contributed.
As Canadian expats in Austria, one of the things that has particularly struck my family and I is the orderliness with which the country is dealing with the pandemic. As quarantine policies were put into place, we saw panic toilet paper hoarding in other countries, but here in Austria people were (amazingly) compliant and seemed to obey instructions and timelines provided by the authorities. We never worried about our basic needs. Grocery stores were always well stocked, public transit was always there and on time – and masks were readily available when required as physical barrier to protect others.
In light of the new strategic plan that will become operational in 2021, IIASA has appointed four program directors to lead new research programs. Raya Muttarak, Keywan Riahi, Elena Rovenskaya, and Yoshihide Wada will form part of the scientific leadership that will address the institute’s research priorities to ensure that program objectives are aligned with the new IIASA strategy and institute values.
IIASA and the International Science Council (ISC) have established a partnership combining the strengths and expertise of the two organizations to define and design sustainability pathways, through a multi-stakeholder dialogue, that will enable a more equitable post-COVID world.