The long-term aim of the IIASA Program on Risk and Vulnerability (RAV) is to conduct conceptual and applied analyses that contribute to decreasing the risk and vulnerability of societies and ecosystems, and promoting their adaptation and resilience, to stresses imposed or aggravated by global change phenomena. Our research is relevant mainly, but not exclusively, to developing countries. By addressing the social, economic and ecological system, and considering multiple stresses and system resilience, vulnerability as a research-organizing concept is more complex than risk. Addressing this complexity is the fundamental challenge of this research program. The specific goals of the program are fourfold:

• to advance the conceptual and methodological development of risk and vulnerability research;
  
  
• to carry out selected risk and vulnerability assessments;
  
  
• to carry out integrative stakeholder-led case studies;
  
  
• and to develop interactive tools that can provide training on vulnerability and adaptation.

The program builds on the methodologies, activities and experience gained from the previous IIASA Risk, Modeling and Society (RMS) Program, and integrates across other IIASA programs and links closely with the vulnerability/resilience research communities.

News & Events:
Contribution to World Development Report 2010
The Mediterranean Area Renewables Generation Estimation Model (MARGE) 

Research Groups :

• The Disasters & Development group is investigating ways for helping households, business and governments in Europe and the developing world better adapt to climate-related and other extreme events. The objective is to develop and carry out studies that characterize risk, vulnerability and adaptive capacity in ways that are useful for policy negotiations, processes and decisions. It involves empirical research, model-based assessment as well as institutional and policy analysis. The work contributes to the EU integrated projects ADAM and Geo-Bene, as well as projects funded among others by DFID, the World Bank, IDB and the ProVention Consortium.
  
  
• The Decisions and Governance group investigates how the presence of risk and uncertainty influences the design of successful policies in the areas of environmental management and climate change. In Europe, the group has identified successful ways of involving citizens in the design of programmes to reduce flood risk, and is now applying these lessons to similar efforts in China and Japan. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the group has identified successful policies and decision-making systems to manage climate variability, including methods for transmitting seasonal climate forecasts to farmers, and helping subsistence farmers better navigate insurance markets. In North Africa, the group is currently examining the policies that reduce the uncertainty associated with investments in renewable energy. Two books are due to be published soon, one with the title Ideas of Fairness, and the other Assessing Vulnerability to Global Environmental Change. Current work contributes to the EU funded ADAM project, the German BMBF funded ALICE project, as well as projects funded among others by the World Food Programme, the Danish Development Agency, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
  
  
• The Water and Resilience group has organized stakeholder-driven dialogues in the Hungarian reach of the Tisza river and in the Lower-Silesian section of the Odra river in Poland. These participatory processes have elicited local knowledge and formed the basis for conceptual and formal models of factors related to the vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity of the social-ecological systems in these river basins. This experience is contributing to two EU integrated projects: NeWater and SCENES.

Responsible for this page: Jun Watabe
Last updated: 02 Dec 2009