Exploring the Water Nexus Areas
IIASA has excellent experience in interdisciplinary studies of the nexus areas in which water plays a significant role. IIASA is also the repository for water-related data from research carried out for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and WATCH, and from the Global Energy Assessment, World Population Program, Global Agro-Ecological Zones, and the GAINS model, all hosted at IIASA.
At a meeting with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in October 2012, Dr. Kabat discussed the research tying into the water-energy nexus, emphasizing the need to study water and energy together, because the two systems are intertwined. For example, recent research co-authored by him and published in Nature Climate Change in June 2012 showed that climate impacts on river flow and water temperatures could result in shortages of cooling water and in reduced energy supply in the future. (Overview of article and links at: https://previous.iiasa.ac.at/ web/previous.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/PR/Archive/US-and-Europeanenergy- supplies-vulnerable.en.html )