Adriano Vinca
Research Scholar
Transformative Institutional and Social Solutions Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Research Scholar
Integrated Assessment and Climate Change Research Group
Energy, Climate, and Environment Program
Biography
Adriano Vinca is a research scholar in the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program. Since his appointment in 2017, he has been working on modeling the interactions between water, energy, land, and climate (WELC) systems for policy analysis while pursuing a PhD (2021) in systems modeling at the University of Victoria, Canada. His current research interests include the integrated assessment of climate change impacts in future climate scenarios, with a focus on both macroeconomic and biophysical impacts (explored in the PRISMA, SPARCCLE, and previously NAVIGATE EU Horizon projects). This includes the exploration of climate change adaptation strategies in the water, energy, and land sectors.
At IIASA, he has been involved in projects with a country or regional focus, which included strong stakeholder engagement and interaction, investigating sustainable development policies to achieve primary access to WELC resources in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (RE4AFAGRI LEAP-RE project), and in the Indus River Basin (ISWEL project).
Within ECE, Vinca also contributes to the development of the global MESSAGEix Integrated Assessment Model (IAM) and its modeling platform. He developed an integrated model, the Nexus Solution Tool (NEST), to assess water-energy-land nexus challenges at the river basin scale, which was then embedded in the MESSAGEix-Nexus module to include both country and global assessment. He has been directly involved in capacity building and dissemination of the various tools to partners and stakeholders interested in new applications of the model.
In addition to his PhD, Vinca also holds a master’s degree (2017) and a bachelor’s degree (2014) in energy engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He was a visiting scholar and research assistant at the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, where he contributed to the improvement of the WITCH IAM. Part of his work focused on exploring the potential of carbon capture and storage technologies in mitigation scenarios and the associated risks.
Both within IIASA and externally, Vinca leads initiatives that merge art and science, fostering collaboration in dissemination and co-creation projects.
Last update: 20 FEB 2025
Publications
Kikstra, J. , Vinca, A. , Lovat, F. , Boza-Kiss, B. , van Ruijven, B. , Wilson, C., Rogelj, J., Zakeri, B. , Fricko, O. , & Riahi, K. (2021). COVID-19 impacts on energy demand can help reduce long-term mitigation challenge. Nature Portfolio 10.21203/rs.3.rs-155224/v1. (Submitted)
Willaarts, B. , Vinca, A. , Parkinson, S. , Riahi, K. , Byers, E. , & Heyl, A. (2021). Cooperation and joint investments are key to sustainable development in the Indus basin. IIASA Policy Brief. Laxenburg, Austria: PB-28
Vinca, A. , Parkinson, S. , & Riahi, K. (2020). Benefits of Cross-Border Cooperation for Achieving Water-Energy-Land Sustainable Development Goals in the Indus Basin. DOI:10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-13296. In: European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly 2020, 4-8 May 2020, Vienna, Austria.
Wada, Y. , Vinca, A. , Parkinson, S. , Willaarts, B. , Magnuszewski, P., Mochizuki, J. , Mayor, B., Wang, Y., Burek, P. , Byers, E. , Riahi, K. , Krey, V. , Langan, S. , van Dijk, M. , Grey, D., Hillers, A., Novak, R., Mukherjee, A., Bhattacharya, A., Bhardwaj, S., Romshoo, S., Thambi, S., Muhammad, A., Ilyas, A., Khan, A., Lashari, B., Mahar, R., Ghulam, R., Siddiqi, A., Wescoat, J., Yogeswara, N., Ashrad, A., & Sidhu, B. (2019). Co-designing Indus Water-Energy-Land Futures. One Earth 10.1016/j.oneear.2019.10.006.
Vinca, A. , Parkinson, S. , Byers, E. , Burek, P. , Khan, Z., Krey, V. , Diuana, F., Wang, Y., Ilyas, A., Köberle, A.C., Staffel, I., Pfenninger, S., Muhammad, A., Rowe, A., Schaeffer, R., Rao, N. , Wada, Y. , Dhilali, N., & Riahi, K. (2019). The Nexus Solutions Tool (NEST): An open platform for optimizing multi-scale energy-water-land system transformations. Geoscientific Model Development Discussions 13 (3) 1095-1121. 10.5194/gmd-2019-134.