Completed Research Projects

FORMAS LTD

Integrating renewable electricity systems with the biomass conversion sector: a focus on extreme meteorological events. More

FORCU

Modification and adjustment of the Full Verified Carbon Account of Forest Ecosystems (Ukraine) based on integration of ground research, remote sensing data and regional models applied to forest ecosystems of Ukrainian Polissya. More

Tropical Futures Initiative

IIASA’s Tropical Futures Initiative represents a novel approach to tackling tropical deforestation through policy assessment and capacity building. More

Crowdsourcing for post-disaster damage mapping

The project takes aim at rapid damage mapping using crowd-sourced data and satellite imagery to support humanitarian relief efforts and post-disaster recovery. More

ECONADAPT Publications

Freedom, Emergence, and Dimensions

The Freedom, Emergence, and Dimensions (FRED) project will explore contributions from the Ergodic Theory of Chaos to systems analysis. More

Systems thinking for transformation

The systems thinking for transformation (SYSTRANS) project will explore ways in which IIASA can extend its public engagement and education efforts to foster systems thinking and transformation. More

SIFCAS

Spatial inventory of carbon emissions and sinks in forestry at scales from local to national significantly increases understanding of the carbon cycling and reduces uncertainty of the inventory results. The project focuses on development of advanced methodologies which are based on explicit spatial approaches to analyze emissions/removals within a Full Verified Greenhouse Gas Account of forest ecosystems at multiple scales. More

Robust Rescaling Methods for Integrated Water, Food, Energy Security Management under Uncertainties and Risks

This project will develop new robust, non-Bayesian probabilistic cross-entropy based rescaling techniques to improve the integration of models and data used in the study of food, water, and energy security under inherent uncertainties and risks. More

IFAD PMPS

The IIASA-IFAD programme is a cornerstone activity in IFAD’s global initiative to conduct rigorous impact evaluations in about 26 countries. It has 2 components: 1) a data enhancement component 2) a scenario building component. These 2 components enhance the data base for the impact evaluations and provide a sector policy and strategy context for these evaluations; and together with IFAD’s impact evaluations programme, these 2 programme components provide policy makers with science-based evidence for policy surveillance and policy development. This programme, in effect, contributes a macro-dimension to IFAD’s impact evaluation work which will lead to more efficient allocation of resources and higher impact of development interventions on rural poor. More

Forest Gov DRC

This project is funded by the Government of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NORAD). It aims to build an independent alliance that can efficiently monitor forest governance in the DRC and to promote the conservation of natural forests to maintain their carbon storage capacity particularly in REDD+ areas.  More

EducEO

The overall aim of the EducEO project, which is funded by the European Space Agency, is to foster the use of new and emerging information and communication technologies (ICT), e.g. location-enabled mobile devices, Web 2.0 and the Internet of Things, etc., in combination with citizen science to enhance the scientific exploitation of Earth Observation (EO) data while simultaneously supporting education and public awareness raising of EO. More

LACO-Wiki

The LACO-Wiki project will integrate the current LACOVAL (LAnd Cover VALidation) software prototype for the validation of land cover maps with Geo-Wiki, a visualization and crowdsourcing tool. The result will be an open access on-line validation platform offering standardized validation functionality for map users and producers.  More

Study on Impacts on Resource Efficiency of Future EU Demand for Bioenergy (ReceBio)

A study on resource efficiency impacts enhanced understanding of how improved resource efficiency could reduce the negative impact of the EU’s increasing use of bioenergy. More

Future Forests

The Future Forests project, a collaboration between the Future Forests Program and IIASA, will provide insights into the impact of the Swedish forest sector on global land use by quantifying the area covered by managed forest and by assessing how the development of short-rotation plantations will affect carbon mitigation. More

CONSENSUS

IIASA is contributing modeling expertise and support for the CONSENSUS project, which aims to deliver tools to provide decision makers with optimal choices in two important EU policy areas: biofuels and climate change (EU Renewable Energy Directive) and Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T). More

Supplying Non-food Biomass in Europe (S2Biom)

The S2Biom project will facilitate the sustainable supply of non-food biomass at the local, regional, and pan-European levels. More

Economics of Climate Change Adaptation in Europe (ECONADAPT)

The ECONADAPT project provides user-orientated methodologies and evidence relating to economic appraisal criteria to inform the choice of adaptation actions using analysis that incorporates cross-scale governance under conditions of uncertainty. More

Options Market and Risk-Reduction Tools for
REDD+ (NORAD OMRRT REDD+)

The NORAD OMRRT REDD+ project contributes to rapidly scaling up demand and supply for REDD+ credits and builds momentum and opportunity for the creation of positive incentives for global forest protection in future carbon markets and other climate policies. More

Quantifying the indirect land use change impact of biofuels consumed in the EU (ILUC)

In an assignment for the European Commission, a consortium of Ecofys, IIASA and E4tech will use the GLOBIOM model to assess indirect land use change impacts of conventional and advanced biofuels consumed in the EU. More

recharge.green – balancing Alpine energy and nature

The recharge.green project helps to consider whether the production of renewable energy at a particular location in the Alps is worth it from the conservation point of view. More

Model-based analysis of catastrophe flood risks

Integrating market based instruments for robust management of catastrophic floods; An IIASA – DELTARES project in Rijnmond - Drechtsteden region of the Netherlands. More

Investment in renewable electricity under policy uncertainty (PURELEC)

PURELEC investigates if real option models can explain how investors in small hydro-power and wind farm projects respond to climate policy uncertainty. More

LEDPathways

The LEDPathways aims to identify low emission agricultural pathways and priorities for mitigation in agricultural landscapes using integrated assessment modelling and scenarios. More

Collecting in-situ Data for Earth Observation Product Validation via Social Games (LandSpotting)

LandSpotting aims to improve the quality of forest or cropland area land cover information by vastly increasing the amount of in-situ validation data available for calibration and validation of satellite-derived land cover. More

Systems Analysis Tools Framework for the EU Bio-Based Economy Strategy (SAT-BBE)

SAT-BBE studies the contribution of a bio-economy in different areas to ensure long term economic and environmental sustainability. More

AusCover Geo-Wiki

The Geo-Wiki Team in collaboration with the Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) AusCover facility is developing an Australian Geo-Wiki Branch that will allow people to review land-cover maps created by AusCover and its partners. More

EUCLIMIT

EUCLIMIT performs model-based scenario quantification which supports the European Commission in undertaking impact assessments and analysing policy options for implementing and further developing the Climate and Energy package and other climate-relevant policies in the EU. More

Operational Global Carbon Observing System (GEOCarbon)

The GEOCarbon Project will coordinate the contribution of European and international research institutes to the development of an Operational Global Integrated Carbon Observation and Analysis System. More

Impact Quantification of Global Changes (Global IQ)

A primary objective of the project is to estimate socio-economic impacts arising from global changes by using economic models. More

Quantifying Projected Impacts Under 2°C Warming (IMPACT2C)

IMPACT2C enhances knowledge, quantifies climate change impacts, and adopts an analytical structure that includes climate and impacts modelling, vulnerabilities, risks and economic costs, as well as potential responses, for Europe. More

The Next Step in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD-PAC)

REDD-PAC aims to develop technical know-how and capacity in designing efficient, effective and environmentally relevant policy strategies for the on-going UN-REDD programme More

Economic,
Social and Political Conditions for Satisfying the World Food Needs (FoodSecure)

The FoodSecure project responds to the challenge of food shortages and volatility by enabling stakeholders to design sustainable strategies to assess and address the short- and long-term challenges of food security. More

Using GEO for Early Warning and Food Security in East Africa (GEOSAF)

GEOSAF researchers created short-term soil moisture forecasts using several crop growth and soil moisture models. More

Weather Forecasts and Soil Data for African Farms (FarmSupport)

FarmSupport developed an application to provide farmers in Ethiopia and Kenya with weather forecasts and soil moisture information to help improve agricultural decision making More

Assessment of Northern Eurasian Forests (ZAPAS)

The ZAPÁS project is intended to make space-based biomass inventory assessments more reliable for boreal forests of Northern Eurasia. More

Impact of Technological Change in Europe (PROSUITE)

PROSUITE aimed to develop the tools needed to predict the impact of technological changes on Europe’s environment, economies, and social institutions over the next several decades. More

Impacts of Glacial Retreat in the Andes (PRAA)

PRAA used pilot projects in three tropical Andes countries to help local ecosystems and economies better adapt to the many impacts of the rapid glacier retreat under way throughout the region. More

Sources and Sinks for Greenhouse Gases (GHG-Europe)

GHG-Europe analyzed European agricultural and forestry lands to determine both the sources and the sinks of three major greenhouse gases and what percentage of those gases was anthropogenic. More

Reducing GHG Emissions Uncertainties (GESAPU)

Research in the more than ten years since the Kyoto Protocol has shown that the methods used to measure and inventory greenhouse gas emissions have significant uncertainties and gaps. GESAPU is intended to reduce the uncertainties of GHG emissions in Poland and Ukraine. More

Energy Use Impacts on the Environment (EnerGEO)

EnerGEO assessed the current and future impact of energy use on the environment by linking environmental observation systems with the processes involved in exploiting energy resources. More

Improving Earth Observation Methodology (EGIDA)

EGIDA was a technical project to create a standard methodology to support GEOSS, the Global Earth Observations System of Systems, through development of evaluation processes, assessment indexes, and databases. More

Earth Observation in the Balkans (BalkanGEONet)

The aim of BalkanGEONet was to strengthen existing Earth Observation research and participation among the Balkan countries and to encourage those countries not yet involved to join the GEO initiative. More

Livestock Production Scenarios (AnimalChange)

AnimalChange creates scenarios that project 20 and 40 years into the future to allow policymakers to see what impact climate change is likely to have on livestock production in Europe, Northern and sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. More

EuroGEOSS — A European Approach to GEOSS

EuroGEOSS contributed to the international effort to create the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) by making existing systems that gather data on forestry, drought, and biodiversity interoperable and easier to use. More

Life Cycle Impacts of Goods, Services, Activities (LC-IMPACT)

The LC-IMPACT project developed methods to assess the environmental life cycle impact of a vast number of goods, services, and activities. Assessments examined the environmental costs of, for example, erosion caused by land use and toxic substances used in production processes. More

Envisioning Paradigm Shifts in Society (PASHMINA)

The PASHMINA project used complex modeling to create scenarios that envision changes in the use of energy, transportation, land, and the environment 20 to 40 years into the future. More