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).

 CONSENSUS brings together a multidisciplinary partnership between experts from the fields of operational research, decision science, social technologies (gamification, crowdsourcing and social analytics), applied system analysis, and visual analytics. It aims to help policymakers tackle large-scale planning problems within two key European Union policy areas: biofuels and climate change (EU Renewable Energy Directive) and Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T).  

The approach taken by CONSENSUS will be to break these large problem areas down into smaller questions. This will help researchers identify the inherent conflicts that could prevent successful policy outcomes and also the trade-offs needed to resolve them, for example, ensuring that biofuels policies do not undermine the right to food. 

IIASA’s GLOBIOM model is used to quantify various biofuel policy scenarios and assess the impact of biofuels on different sustainability pillars (environment, climate change mitigation, food security and economy) and trade-offs.

Background

Policymakers are faced on daily basis with different policy choices and objectives that are subject to inherent conflicts and  thus require consideration of trade-offs to achieve policy aims. For example, if a policymaker wishes to construct a road, a number of factors need to be considered, for example, investment costs, socioeconomic returns, environmental aspects, and safety considerations, so that priorities can be balanced accordingly. 

Using multicriteria decision analysis methodology, the CONSENSUS project will model existing real-world user cases and deliver comprehensive, easy-to-use tools, to allow policymakers to make optimal choices based on the relevant criteria. 

Crowd-sourcing and gamification will be used at various phases of the project, including refining criteria, gathering input, examining resulting visualizations, and assisting in decision making. Citizen involvement in decision making and the transparency of the process will support greater public acceptance of any decisions made.


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Last edited: 07 October 2014

CONTACT DETAILS

Petr Havlík

Program Director and Principal Research Scholar Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program

Research Group Leader and Principal Research Scholar Integrated Biosphere Futures Research Group - Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program

Stefan Frank

Senior Research Scholar Integrated Biosphere Futures Research Group - Biodiversity and Natural Resources Program

Timeframe

October 2013 - March 2016

Project Homepage

CONSENSUS on Twitter

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