ASA Research Insights

24 January 2020

Increasing opportunities for sustainable behavior

To mitigate climate change and safeguard ecosystems, we need to make drastic changes in our consumption and transport behaviors. A new IIASA study shows how even minor changes to available infrastructure can trigger tipping points in the collective adoption of sustainable behaviors. More

10 December 2019

Could we cool the Earth with an ice-free Arctic?

The Arctic region is heating up faster than any other place on Earth, and as more and more sea ice is lost every year, we are already feeling the impacts. IIASA researchers explored strategies for cooling down the oceans in a world without this important cooling mechanism. More

14 November 2019

Protecting against pest outbreaks through modeling

Options Winter 2019/20: A newly developed multi-scale network model can help to mitigate the spreading potential of pests. More

27 November 2019

Unraveling the complexities of a digital future

Options Winter 2019/20: The pace of digital transformation is accelerating and in the process redefining traditional industry sectors and how we live and work. More

19 August 2019

Uncertainty in emissions estimates in the spotlight

National or other emissions inventories of greenhouse gases that are used to develop strategies and track progress in terms of emissions reductions for climate mitigation contain a certain amount of uncertainty, which inevitably has an impact on the decisions they inform. IIASA researchers contributed to several studies in a recently published volume that aims to enhance understanding of uncertainty in emissions inventories. More

28 June 2019

Financial risk in the spotlight

Options Summer 2019: IIASA researchers looked at various aspects of global financial risk from a systems analysis perspective More

17 April 2019

Shocking economics: computing the effects of major events on out-of-equilibrium economies

A shock pushes economies out of a state of equilibrium. Modern macroeconomics are still based on the assumption of equilibria. That makes them fail when dealing with economies in times of crises. IIASA researchers and their colleagues from research partner Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH) are proposing a new method borrowed from physics that makes the effects of major events on out-of-equilibrium economies computable for the first time. More

30 November 2018

Holistic, network approach to life science needed to solve systemic environmental problems

Achieving a sustainable world will require a paradigm shift in the way we approach life sciences and ecology, according to a new book cowritten by IIASA researcher Brian Fath, with a focus on a holistic, multi-model view of life and the environment. More

13 November 2018

Making food and energy production in China compatible under limited water supply

Options Winter 2018/19: Researchers from IIASA and China collaborated on a study to find the most cost efficient way of producing enough food and energy while taking limitations on the availability of land and water into account. More

22 October 2018

Financial and non-financial firms need the same strong regulations to protect economies

Researchers at IIASA and the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna, have discovered that non-financial firms, such as vehicle manufacturers and energy companies, contribute to systemic risk in financial systems in the same way as financial institutions like banks, and as such, should be regulated in the same way. More

23 May 2018

New papers highlight economic benefits of European-Eurasian economic ties

A IIASA-led project looking at economic ties between the European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) has published three new reports offering recommendations to improve economic cooperation despite ongoing political cool-down. More

25 October 2017

Using demand-side management to solve UK energy problems

Options Winter 2017/18: Demand side management has been recognized as a powerful tool to balance the grid and help the transition to a more sustainable system, but it will need a regulatory framework. More

4 November 2017

System failure

Options Winter 2017/18: Highly interconnected networks are everywhere in our world, from finance to ecosystems: How can we strengthen them against collapse? More

26 October 2016

A tale of two cities: Beijing before and after 2000

Options Magazine Winter 2016: When it comes to carbon emissions, Beijing today is a different city than the same city before 2000. More

22 June 2017

Mathematical confirmation: Rewiring financial networks reduces systemic risk

A proposed tax on systemically risky financial transactions could reduce the risk of financial system crashes by spurring financial networks to reshape in more resilient ways. More

22 June 2017

Breaking the habit: The path to a greener future

Options Magazine Summer 2017: In order to achieve environmental and sustainability goals, individuals around the world will need to change their behavior, to consume fewer resources and make less waste. But how can we break out of long-established patterns? More

12 June 2017

Optimal harvests without top-down planning

From the air, Bali’s rice terraces look like colorful mosaics, because farmers plant their fields at different times. A new study shows that the resulting fractal patterns actually lead to optimal harvests, without overarching management. More

27 March 2017

New international banking rules would not prevent another financial crisis

The Basel III regulatory framework, as planned, will not reduce systemic risk in the financial sector, according to new research. Instead, regulations should aim to increase the resilience of financial networks. More

16 February 2017

Preferential trade agreements enhance global trade at the expense of its resilience

The global commodity trade is a complex system where its network structure, which may arise from bilateral and multilateral agreements, affects its growth and resilience. At time of economic shocks, redundancy in this system is vital to the resilience of growth. More

24 November 2016

Game theory provides new insight on spreading environmentally conscious behavior

The simple act of exchanging information can influence people to change their actions to protect the environment, according to a new study that links game theory with psychological science. More

3 November 2016

Metropolis rising

Options Magazine Winter 2016: Could cities drive a global transition towards sustainability? More

8 June 2016

More than connecting the dots

Options Magazine Summer 2016: New methods in network science bring fresh insight to complex systems. More

11 April 2016

Intelligent transaction tax could help reduce systemic risk in financial networks 

A new IIASA study proposes a solution for mitigating the increasingly risky nature of financial markets, based on an analysis of systemic risk in financial networks. More

Data analysis revealing behavior patterns

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers apply contemporary approaches to analyze newly available “big data” from social media datasets to find new insights. More

Managing uncertainty in climate science and meeting sustainability constraints

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are a particular challenge for sustainability. Decisions need to be made now to avoid unsustainable futures, but the basis for these decisions, in terms of both data and models, encompasses vast inherent uncertainties. Proper accounting of uncertainties when verifying mitigation efforts and analyzing scenarios of future emissions is the focus of several Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program studies. More

Conceptualizing and quantifying resilience and sustainability

Researchers in the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program contribute to the understanding of sustainability by applying the experiences of their particular studies, each of which deals with the concept in its own way. This allows for development of diverse, system-analytic approaches to quantifying sustainability. More

System transitions and resilience of systems

Humanity relies on a huge array of systems, from local ecosystems to global economy. The resilience of these systems to shocks, and whether they undergo critical transitions if pushed past a tipping point, is an important part of the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program’s research. More

Modeling strategic interactions

Advanced System Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop game-theoretic methods to better understand the strategic interactions between multiple agents and model the behavior of countries involved in international environmental agreements to find ways of inducing cooperation. More

Network dynamics and systemic risks

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop dynamic network models of ecological, economic, and social systems; in particular, financial systemic risk and cascading failures in the inter-bank lending network are studied. More

Analyzing the role of indirect connections in empirical networks

Advanced System Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop methods and case studies analyzing empirical networked systems from the ecological to the economic, financial, energy-related, and others. They also analyze the latest big data sets on social networks. More

Interactions between systems

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program develops network-based modeling and assessment frameworks to analyze the resilience and risk within social, economic, material, and ecological networks. More

Advances in control theory

Researchers in the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program make advances in contemporary control theory related to control under incomplete information, control of distributed systems, and construction of the attainability domains. More

Modeling and optimal management of size-structured biological populations

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop and analyze stylized models of biological populations (e.g., fish or forests), in which individuals’ growth significantly depends on their size or age and on the size or age of others. The aim is to understand the consequences of various management strategies, and to identify those, which can optimize typical economic (e.g., profit) and environmental (e.g., biodiversity) objectives. More

Robust solutions for the food-water-energy nexus

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers model interconnected food, water, and energy systems and advance methods of stochastic optimization. This can help to design management strategies that are robust with respect to inherent uncertainties and risks. More

Drivers and impacts of economic growth

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop and study stylized economic growth models and advance methods of the optimal control theory needed to analyze such models, also taking inherent uncertainties into account. Long-term economic growth is driven by the dynamics of natural, physical, and human capital and is subject to feedback with the environment. More

Optimal behavior of systems

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program examines management options for human-environment system dynamics using stylized models and latest developments in methods of the optimization and control theory, game theory, and other related fields. More

13 November 2015

Network analysis shows systemic risk in mineral markets

A shortage of a rare mineral could spur global market instabilities, according to a new analysis of international commodity trade networks. More

2 September 2015

Risk of financial crisis higher than previously estimated

The risk of a financial crisis is substantially higher than previously estimated, according to new research that accounts for multiple levels of interconnectedness in the financial system. More

Risks and opportunities of interregional economic integration

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program coordinates the IIASA’s Futures Initiative on Eurasian Economic Integration, dealing with the complex issues of economic cooperation between countries of the Eurasian continent. More

Resilience of regional economies

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers are developing agent-based modeling frameworks that simulate economic agents (individuals, firms, banks, and so on) and their interactions under different regulations and input scenarios. More

Data analysis revealing behavior patterns

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers apply contemporary approaches to analyze newly available data sets and find new insights and stylized facts. More

Managing uncertainty in climate science and meeting sustainability constraints

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers work on conceptualizing the notion of sustainability and exploring different approaches to evaluating and quantifying it. More

Strategic interactions in multi-agent systems: Game-theoretic approach

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers are advancing game theory approaches and applying them to the study of stylized models of social interactions. More

Network dynamics and contagion effects in natural and human systems

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop dynamic network models of ecological, economic, and social systems. There is a particular focus on the issue of financial systemic risk and cascading failures in the inter-bank lending network. More

Indirect effects and informational entropy in natural and human networks

Advanced System Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop methods and case-studies analyzing ecological, economic, energy, financial and other networked empirical systems. These methods often originate in the natural science disciplines (e.g., physics, ecology) and then transfer to social sciences disciplines (e.g., economics). More

Food-energy-water nexus: Robust solutions

Through case studies, Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers model interconnected food, water, and energy systems at the local and global levels with the aim of suggesting robust management strategies with respect to uncertainties and risks. More

Attainable solutions and model sensitivity

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers advance methods of control theory that allow models of complex human-Earth interactions to be studied under incomplete information and uncertainty. More

Optimal spreading of risks

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers have developed a framework to produce policy instruments that are robust with respect to potential uncertainties to combat growing risks from natural hazards. More

Endogenous economic growth: Drivers and impacts

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop and study stylized models of endogenous economic growth in which long-term economic growth is generated by such factors as physical and human capital. An extended form of these models also includes feedback with the environment. More

Optimal management of heterogeneous resources

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers develop and study stylized models of management of heterogeneous resources to allow them to analyze size-structured populations, such as fish and forests; the aim is to understand the consequences of various management strategies and also to reveal which management principles can optimize certain economic and environmental objectives. More

System flips and resilience of systems

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program researchers experiment with qualitative and quantitative methods and approaches to study systems’ resilience by analyzing possible shock/stress scenarios. More

Optimal behavior of systems

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program develops models that explain the behavior of particular human-Earth systems; it also advances methods of optimization theory, control theory, theory of dynamic systems, game theory, and other related fields that are used to analyze those models. More

Interactions within systems

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program uses graph theory, information theory, network analysis and other related fields and develops network-based modeling and assessment frameworks to analyze social, economic, material, energy and other networks. More

Uncertainty, resilience, risk and robust solutions

In the area of uncertainty, resilience, risk and robust solutions, in 2013 ASA researchers focused on the resilience of ecosystems and ecosystem services, and considered the resilience of socioeconomic networks. More

Stochastic optimization and robust solutions

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been been developing quantile-based stochastic optimization methods to produce solutions that are robust against growing economic, social, environmental risks with respect to all potential uncertainties. More

Resilience of social systems

Similarly to ecosystems, social systems – from firms to countries – are becoming more and more subject to various stressors whose effects penetrate throughout the system by means of social ties and economic links. The external disturbances here may be of political, economic, financial and even environmental nature. More

Resilience of ecosystems and ecosystem services

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program studied ecological risk assessment which evaluates impacts of immediate and long-term stressors on the environment.  More

Financial instruments for global carbon emission reduction

A novel decentralized emission trading process, developed by the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program, started to undergo review in 2013. More

Structure and robustness of economic networks

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 contributed to the research of network structures and resilience by conducting studies of economic networks. More

Formation of social networks

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 studied communication, friendship, or trade networks, known as multiplex networks, which form the structural backbone of human societies. More

Model performance

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program reviewed techniques available across various fields for characterizing the performance of environmental models with a focus on numerical, graphical, and qualitative methods. More

Agent-based modeling

Since 2011 the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been developing an agent-based model (ABM) “Dream Valley” which is able to simulate the economic, social, and environmental interactions and dynamics of a region. More

Integration of modeling resources into Decision Support Systems (DSS)

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been working for several years on Web-enabled structured modeling, multi-criteria analysis, and infrastructure for sharing research databases, all aimed at supporting collaborative interdisciplinary research for decision support. More

Integrated modeling and qualitative analysis

As environmental problems do not respect disciplinary boundaries, integrated assessment modeling, pioneered by IIASA, is a useful adjunct to environmental policy analysis, integrating knowledge from more than one domain into a single framework. More

Eurasian economic integration

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program is coordinating a project which aims at an open and in-depth discussion and analysis of dimensions of economic integration covering Russia, its neighbors, and the European Union, as well as in a larger trans-continental framework where integration extends also to the key Asian players More

Optimal management of heterogeneous resources

Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) researchers study optimal management of heterogeneous resources, such as fish and forests, which is an important tool for advising policymakers on the best strategies for managing the environment. More

Optimal economic growth

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) researchers in 2013 worked on developing new economic growth models capable of generating “green growth” and sustainable development solutions. More

Dynamic systems, control, and optimization

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program's study of dynamical systems, control, and optimization, is based on understanding the heterogeneous interactions of the parts of large socioeconomic systems that function across many sectors and are driven by multiple agents. More

Big data analysis

Currently emerging “big data” techniques are reshaping many fields of science into data science. The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 began developing tools to gain added value from large data clusters. More

Artificial intelligence and data analysis

Advances were made in 2013 by the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in stochastic downscaling, identifying structural changes in time series of socio-ecological transitions, and analyzing “big data" sets. More

Structural changes in time series

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 analyzed time series data of historic transitions to gain insights into how possible future transitions to sustainability might evolve. More

Uncertainty in environmental services

Total uncertainty in greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions changes over time due to “learning” and the structural change in the GHG emitters. Understanding uncertainty over time is important to improve setting emission targets in the future and was key to the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program's work in 2013. More

Systemic risks and networks

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program in 2013 looked at systems marked by interlinkages and interdependencies, where failure of one entity or a cluster of entities can cause a cascading failure capable of bringing down an entire system. More

Simulations and agent-based modeling

In 2013 the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program carried out simulations of the actions and interactions of autonomous agents in order to assess their effects on systems as a whole. More

Multiple objectives, tradeoffs, and games

In multiple objectives, trade-offs, and games, development of a user-friendly prototype software tool for Multiple-Criteria Model Analysis (MCMA) was completed, the co-benefits of key energy sustainability objectives were revealed, and decision-support system (DSS) with multiple objectives of energy users, producers, and legislative authorities were designed. More

Integration of models

The Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been working to develop a well justified tool for integration of different viewpoints into a single picture. More

Advances in solving optimal control problems

In 2013 the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program made several new contributions to the development of optimal control theory for managing socio-environmental systems within a modeling framework. More

Advances in mathematical statistics

Driven by the demand from modeling applications, the Advanced Systems Analysis (ASA) Program has been developing several different approaches to gaining information from data using mathematical statistics. More

3 July 2014

Economic cooperation “from Lisbon to Vladivostok”

The new IIASA flagship project for exploring economic cooperation between Europe and countries of the former USSR. More


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Last edited: 31 January 2019

CONTACT DETAILS

Elena Rovenskaya

Program Director and Principal Research Scholar Advancing Systems Analysis Program

International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Schlossplatz 1, A-2361 Laxenburg, Austria
Phone: (+43 2236) 807 0 Fax:(+43 2236) 71 313