The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is a non-governmental research organization located in Austria. Because of its non-governmental status, IIASA is independent and can provide non-political and unbiased perspectives. This neutrality and impartiality is particularly valued by those utilizing institute research findings.

IIASA is sponsored by scientific National Member Organizations (NMOs) in Austria, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Republic of Kazakhstan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, Sweden, Ukraine, and the United States of America. Each NMO nominates one representative to IIASA's executive council, which generally oversees Institute development.

The research projects at IIASA cover a variety of scientific fields. The institute conducts interdisciplinary scientific studies on environmental, economic, technological and social issues in the context of human dimensions of global change. In their studies, IIASA researchers generate methods and tools useful to both decision makers and the scientific community. The work is based on original state-of-the-art methodology and analytical approaches linking a variety of natural and social science disciplines.

The Institute's goals are:

• to choose problems for which solutions will benefit the public, the scientific community, and national and international institutions,
• to address critical issues in an innovative manner, and
• to provide timely and relevant information and policy analyses.

In principle, research scholars at IIASA study the ways in which people affect the natural environment and are in turn affected by it. Systems methods for the analysis of global issues provide the mathematical and methodological backbone of the work of the applied projects at IIASA.

The Population Project has contributed to research on long-term dynamics of Population-Development-Environment (PDE) interactions since the early 1990s through a series of case studies on Mauritius, Cape Verde, Yucatan Peninsula, Botswana, Namibia and Mozambique.

The results on Botswana, Namibia, and Mozambique are based on computer simulation models. The PDE philosophy has been about the same throughout the projects. We created detailed models, close to the data, which integrate population, development and environment interactions. The model results are used as a communication tool between science and policy.

IIASA History: The IIASA charter was signed in London in October 1972, but the history goes back six years earlier. In 1966 American president Lyndon Johnson gave a rather remarkable speech — this was during the Cold War — in which he said it was time that the scientists of the United States and the Soviet Union worked together on problems other than military and space matters, on problems that plagued all advanced societies, like energy, our oceans, the environment, and health. And he called for a liaison between the scientists of East and West.

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