IIASA - International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis

The International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) is a nongovernmental research organization.

It conducts inter-disciplinary scientific studies on environmental, economic, technological and social issues in the context of human dimensions of global change and acted as coordinator of the Global Energy Assessment (GEA) (www.globalenergyassessment.org) for Rio+20. Sustainability and the human dimensions of global change are the key issues in IIASA's investigations. These driving forces are studied as individual topics and in the wider context of their relevance to changes in the global system. Systems methods for the analysis of global issues provide the mathematical and methodological backbone to the work of the applied projects at IIASA.

The Water (WAT) Program was established in 2013 in conjunction with a flagship project of IIASA, the Water Futures and Solutions Initiative (WFaS). The program seeks to incorporate water science into assessment and planning studies at the nexus of water, energy, food and environmental security. Its aim is to establish a critical mass of knowledge in the nexus through development of new modelling tools and data collection.

Website

http://www.iiasa.ac.at

Members:

Laixiang Sun is a Professor at Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, USA; and a Senior Research Scholar at IIASA in Austria. He has produced more than 130 research publications. His work in MEDEAS includes scenarios design, input-output (IO) modelling, and integration of IO into the MEDEAS system dynamic model.

Dr. Kuishuang Feng is an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Geographical Sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) and a Visiting Research Scholar at IIASA. He is an expert in spatial economic modeling and related environmental issues. He has rich experience in developing regional, national and global economic models with extension of environmental parameters. In MEDEAS, he works on environemntal input-output modeling and scenario analsis.

Dr Klaus Hubacek is an ecological economist with a research focus on conceptualizing and modelling coupled natural human systems. Klaus has worked extensively with stakeholders in participatory research projects and led large interdisciplinary research teams. He has conducted studies for a number of national agencies in Austria, China, Czech Republic, Japan, UK, and U.S. and international institutions. In MEDEAS, Klaus contributes to future scenarios and input-output modelling.