2014 was Australia's second year as a member country of IIASA with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) serving as National Member Organization.
Australia
Researchers from Australia and IIASA collaborated in a range of areas including:
Research into how to develop livestock production systems that are both more productive and have less of an impact on the climate;
A variety of internationally significant projects including Future Earth, the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium, and the Global Carbon Project
Significant opportunities for future collaboration remain both in research and capacity building activities.
Scientists from the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Program applied the GLOBIOM model to analyze a large number of climate change scenarios in order to investigate the extent to which producers facing climate change favored irreversible adaptation measures over low-cost field-scale adjustments. more
In cooperation with its National Member Organizations of Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia, the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group co-hosted a session on applied systems analysis as part of the ninth ASEAN Science and Technology Week (ASTW) in Bogor, Indonesia. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Environmental Resources and Developments (ERD) research group upgraded the livestock module of the IIASA model GLOBIOM to make it the state-of-the-art global economic model in terms of livestock sector representation. more
The negative emissions research of the Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) group was further developed building on several past collaborations and previous biomass and carbon capture and storage (BECCS) workshops at IIASA, in Indonesia, Brazil, and Tokyo. more
In 2014 the Water (WAT) Program worked on a project to improve the current understanding of the geography of water-related ecosystem services, while accounting for both biophysical and economic controls on services; it will also assess how new management strategies can enhance the resilience of the global water system over a 100-year time frame. more
The Ecosystems Services and Management (ESM) Policy and Science Interface (PSI) research group organized the formal launch of the cross-sectoral “Tropical Futures Initiative” (TFI) at a workshop with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding in Jakarta, Indonesia, in February 2014. more
Risk, Policy and Vulnerability (RPV) research is critical in terms of overcoming the perception that insurance can contribute to risky behavior and thus disaster risk. It reveals how indexed systems, where payouts are triggered by an event parameter and not by loss claims, not only avoid moral hazard and encourage risk reduction, but can increase the access of the poor to much-needed safety nets. more
Sherly da Costa, of Friedrich-Schiller-University, Germany, analyzed the community perception of flood risk and key sources of community resilience to flooding in East Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. more