Mar 6, 2014 | Alumni, History
By Aviott John, IIASA alumnus
Anyone who has seen before and after photos of Schloss Laxenburg—the home of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)—knows what an incredible physical transformation the building went through between 1972 and 1981 to become the home of IIASA.
Aviott John with his daughter Megala. He worked at IIASA for 37 years.
The functional and organizational changes that happened inside Schloss Laxenburg as IIASA developed, were just as striking as the physical ones. Here was an abstract idea taking shape, not only in the wood and stone of Schloss Laxenburg, but in the various actions of people; in the recruitment of staff from more than 40 different nationalities who had never worked together before; in joint study programs to discover how large organizations work successfully under different political systems; and in the solution of common ecological problems in different parts of the world. No less important were the social interactions that formed the basis for deep friendships that ultimately provide the glue for successful international relations
Today the word globalization slips glibly off the tongue. The ability to travel was not so taken for granted in the world of the 1970s. There were many reasons for that, the most obvious being the political systems in place at the time and the relatively high financial cost of air travel. Today the challenge the Institute must face is perhaps not the financial cost of air travel, but its environmental cost. The Institute no longer just works across the divide between East and Western Europe as in Cold War days, but now across the barriers between developed and developing countries, on all continents of the world. And so the transformations continue. I feel privileged to have been an observer of some of these transformations for 37 years.
IIASA Alumni Day will take place on April 29, 2014, and we are inviting alumni to send their memories and photos of their time at IIASA. This post comes from Aviott John, longtime IIASA employee in the library and communications departments, who retired last year. To contribute, please contact IIASA Development Assistant Deirdre Zeller.
Before: View of the inner courtyard of Schloss Laxenburg, 1962
After: View of the Schloss Laxenburg inner courtyard after renovation in 1978
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Feb 27, 2014 | Demography, Science and Policy
By Erich Striessnig, IIASA World Population Program
Is replacement level fertility really the best for society? Maybe not, say IIASA researchers. Photo Credit: Héctor Gómez Herrero via Flickr (Creative Commons License)
When asked what a desirable fertility level for populations might be, most politicians, journalists, and even social scientists would say it is around two children per woman, as this would – on the long run – prevent a population from either exploding or dying out. Other reasons for championing replacement level fertility include maintaining the size of the labor force and stabilizing the dependency ratio. But what is the evidence for this rule of thumb?
My colleague Wolfgang Lutz and I aimed to answer this question in a new study published in the journal Demographic Research. We found, not surprisingly, that the optimal fertility level strongly depends on what you mean by optimal.
The criteria for optimal fertility have often been motivated by nationalistic desires for larger and thus more powerful nations. Today our concerns run more towards the dangers of overpopulation for the environment, the climate, and the limited resources on Earth, dampening the enthusiasm for high fertility rates. But as fertility rates fall in many countries around the world, there is a growing concern about aging populations and an increasing number of elderly depending on an ever smaller number of people actively participating in the labor force.
While all of these fears relate to the same problem – an unbalanced population age-structure – the resulting assessments of what level of fertility would be desirable completely ignore the heterogeneity of the population with regard to important demographic characteristics, especially the population’s education structure.
In our study, we wanted to account for the fact that more education not only has higher economic costs, including later entry to the labor market and higher life expectancy, which can hardly been seen as a negative effect. But education also leads to higher productivity, less unemployment, and a healthier workforce that would on average retire later. To include these factors in our assessment, we ran thousands of simulations using varying constant rates of fertility.
What we found is that when we factor in education, the level of fertility that on the long run would lead to the lowest level of dependency is well below the supposedly magical level of two children per woman.
We also tried to link the effects of different fertility rates to the resulting environmental burden by factoring in expected carbon emissions. Not surprisingly, higher rates of fertility lead to faster population growth and more emissions. That suggests that an environmentally aware society should aim for even lower fertility levels.
While our research is not intended to prescribe fertility levels for individuals and countries, the conclusions drawn from this thought experiment suggest that the widespread popular notions that current fertility levels–for example in France or the US are just right because they are around replacement level, whereas they are too low in countries like Germany or Austria–may be wrong. According to our new study, the opposite is true.
Reference
Striessnig, E, Lutz W. (2014) How does education change the relationship between fertility and age-dependency under environmental constraints? A long-term simulation exercise Demographic Research, 30(16):465-492 http://www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol30/16/
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Feb 19, 2014 | Risk and resilience
By Junko Mochizuki, Adriana Keating and Reinhard Mechler, IIASA Risk, Policy, and Vulnerability Program
Flood in Davao City, Philippines, January 20, 2013. Photo credit: Jeff Pioquinto via Flickr
The year 2015 will mark a crucial milestone for the international development, climate change, and disaster management communities. Negotiations are currently underway to hammer out three landmark decisions: a much anticipated global climate deal to be agreed at the COP21 meeting in Paris, a new agreement on post-Millenium Development Goals known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the post-Hyogo disaster risk reduction framework (HFA2) to be adopted at the 2015 World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai. The outcomes of these three international forums will largely shape the global agendas for the next few decades.
The HFA2 builds on the knowledge and experience gained from 10 years of implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015, the first international initiative to offer a global blueprint for disaster risk reduction. Since its inception, 22 core indicators have been developed to monitor global progress across five priority areas, including building a culture of safety and enhancing national and local institutional architecture. The implementation has thus far shown mixed progress. The key remaining issue is the underlying drivers of risk and that the HF2 must address both the correction of existing risk and prevention of future risk creation.
On 10 and 11 February, the world’s leading experts on disaster risk management gathered at IIASA to begin designing an effective HFA2 monitoring system. At the meeting, co-organized with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), participants deliberated how the HFA2 monitoring system could address the remaining issues of risk creation, mainstreaming, and resilience building, and inform ongoing discussions on SDGs and climate change mitigation and adaptation.
The meeting participants emphasized that the notion of resilience to natural disasters or other unexpected events offers a unique entry point for shared discussions across the development, disaster, and climate change research and policy communities. The resilience notion of “bouncing-forward” stresses that societies must understand the risks they face, and be prepared use both pre- and post-disaster opportunities to implement policies that can reduce risk and advance development objectives. These are important additions to the disaster risk management debate which are essential to the post-2015 approach.
But many challenges remain. We need a concrete set of indicators to measure the multi-dimensional concept of disaster resilience. While we expect to see the adoption of quantitative disaster risk reduction targets—such as mortality, affected population, or economic loss reduction, we do not yet have a globally agreed methodology to measure disaster loss and damage. More fundamentally, an emphasis on loss data could send the world a wrong signal that disaster loss is all that matters. This speaks contrary to IIASA’s ongoing research. What we have found time and time again is that what matters most is a country’s steady management of underlying risk and resilience, whether or not a disaster has occurred.
As negotiations continue towards the climate, development, and disaster goals, it is clear that effective framework must be organized around a holistic understanding of well being and its systemic components. Over the coming months, researchers and analysts including IIASA staff will work with UNISDR to develop a global framework linking the concepts of risk and resilience.
About the authors
Junko Mochizuki and Adriana Keating are research scholars and Reinhard Mechler is the deputy program leader in IIASA’s Risk, Policy, and Vulnerability Program. Their current work at IIASA focuses on advancing the notion of disaster resilience, evaluating how novel and participatory system analysis tools may be used to inform policy on disaster resilience building.
Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Feb 18, 2014 | Alumni
By Martha Wohlwendt
IIASA’s Alumni Association is hosting its first Alumni Day on April 29, 2014, and we are inviting alumni to send their memories and photos of their time at IIASA. Our first post comes from Martha Wohlwendt, IIASA’s first employee, Executive Secretary/Administrative Assistant in the Director’s office. To contribute, please contact IIASA Development Assistant Deirdre Zeller.
From left to right: Martha Wohlwendt, Howard Raiffa, Vivien Schimmel
It was October 1972 when I joined IIASA. My first few days at the office, then located in Vienna’s 3rd District, were a bit confusing since there was only a lawyer taking care of matters. The first IIASA director, Professor Howard Raiffa, and the secretary, Dr. Andrei Bykov, had been travelling back and forth from their respective countries but had not yet arrived to stay.
Andrei Bykov took office shortly thereafter, then Professor Howard Raiffa and his wife Estelle arrived and with them his secretary Margot Sweet and his first assistant, Mark Thompson with his wife Elizabeth. In the weeks and months that followed, the initial team grew: we were joined by Prof. Letov, IIASA’s first Deputy Director, Silver Newton, Ruth Steiner, Julyan Watts, Vivien Schimmel, Claudia Staindl, to name a few. A personnel system was needed, and one of the first steps was to develop a staff numbering system. I was given number 001, as the first IIASA staff member. Andrei Bykov was to receive 002, but it was agreed by all that, because of his good looks and his nationality, he should be given 007.
The small IIASA team then moved to a beautiful villa in Baden – Haus Rosenauer – from which IIASA operated for almost a year. In the early spring of 1973 Howard Raiffa and I moved into the first office available in the Schloss – his office. Shortly thereafter approximately 10 more offices were handed over to IIASA.
My first Council Meeting, in January 1973, was quite an experience. We were very few and so much to do! You would see Andrei Bykov and me photocopying, sorting and then delivering the meeting documents to the participants in their hotels in my little Volkswagen Beetle. We also drove Council members from the airport to the hotels and back. Prof. H. Koziolek and his assistant, from the Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic, had to squeeze into my Beetle from the airport to the hotel and then to IIASA.
Howard and Estelle Raiffa, with their warmth and appreciation for others, instituted a strong feeling of family which so many of us still remember today. They often invited the small staff to their apartment in the Operngasse for dinner, and Estelle would serve some of her delicious homemade dishes. It was during these years that we had the first 4th of July picnic organized by IIASA staff from the United States, the unforgettable celebration of the October Revolution, organized by the staff from the Soviet Union, the International Dinner, at which time all of us brought a national dish from our home country, the wine and cheese parties, the beer parties, and other IIASA events, some of which continue to this day.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
Jan 28, 2014 | Risk and resilience
Interview with IIASA risk expert Nadejda Komendantova
In a new study, IIASA Risk, Policy, and Vulnerability Program researcher Nadejda Komendantova and colleagues from Germany and Switzerland examined how natural hazards and risks assessments can be incorporated into decision-making processes in Europe on mitigation of multiple risks.
A cyclist rides along the flooded Danube River in Braila, Romania, in 2010. Credit: cod_gabriel on Flickr
Why did you decide to conduct this study?
European decision makers currently have a number of methods that they can use to assess natural hazards and risks and apply to the decision-making process. These methods include risk and hazard assessments, probabilistic scenarios, and socio-economic and engineering models. The variety of tools is enormous and volume of knowledge and data is growing. However, the process of communication between science and practice leaves a lot of open questions for research.
Researchers have developed a few tools to provide multiple risk assessment of a given territory. But even though these models have been tested by operational and practicing stakeholders, there is limited information about how useful the models are for civil protection stakeholders to use in practice. In order to communicate results from science to practice and make it possible for decision-makers to use such tools, it helps to involve decision-makers in the development process. Participatory modeling, which is an important part of risk governance, allows us to not only to take into consideration the facts, but also values and judgments that decision-makers bring to their actions.
What questions did you aim to answer in your study?
The decision-making process becomes even more complex when we talk about situations with multiple risks – multi-risks – which involve interactions between several risks. How will decision-maker will prioritize their actions on risk mitigation or on resources allocation when facing not single but multiple risks? We also wanted to find out if the tools developed by science such as decision support models could be suitable for these tasks. Another question is if there are differences in perceptions of the usability of decision-support tools between different stakeholders, such as academia (based on more theoretical considerations) and civil protection (based on practice).
What are the multiple risks or hazards that face Europe?
Across Europe, people suffer losses not just from single hazards, but also from multiple events in combination. The most important hazards for Europe are earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, wildfires, winter storms, and floods along both rivers and coastlines.
What methods did you use to conduct your study?
To answer our research questions we collected feedback from civil protection stakeholders on existing risk and hazard assessment tools as well as on the generic multi-risk framework to understand interrelations between different risks, such as conjoint and cascade effects. The new study was based on a method developed by Arnaud Mignan at ETH Zürich, with a decision-support tool developed by Bijan Khazai at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Through a participatory approach, the decision-support tool allowed stakeholders to assign relative importance to the losses for different sectors for each of the scenarios likely to occur in the region.
We collected data through questionnaires on existing risk assessment tools in Europe and their implementation. Then, using the new framework, we conducted focus group discussions in Bonn and Lisbon, and decision-making experiments applying the developed tools. Afterwards we had a chance to collect feedback from stakeholders.
What did you find?
The study showed that general standards for multi-risk assessment are still missing—there are different terminologies and different methodologies related to data collection, monitoring, and output. According to stakeholders from practice, this variety of data, assessment methods, tools and terminology might be a barrier for implementation of the multi-risk approach.
The study also found a sharp divide in understanding of the usability of the tools and areas for their application. Academic stakeholders saw the risk-assessment tools as being useful to understand loss and communication of multi-risk parameters. The stakeholders from practice instead saw the tool as more useful for training and educational purposes as well as to raise awareness about possible multi-risk scenarios.
What should be done to help decision-makers make better decisions?
The study made it clear that we need to work on training and education, both for policymakers and the public. The models we have developed could be useful for educating stakeholders about the usefulness of a multi-risk approach, and to disseminate these results to the general public. It was recommended to use the tools during special training workshops organized for decision-makers on multi-risk mitigation to see possible consequences of a multi-hazard situation for their region. Participatory modeling, involving cooperation between scientists and decision-makers from practice, could not only improve communication processes between science and policy. In addition, decision-support models can become a part of dialogue to help to avoid judgment biases and systematic errors in decision-making and to help in complex decision-making process grounded on human rationality and judgment biases.
Reference:
Nadejda Komendantova, Roger Mrzyglocki, Arnaud Mignan, Bijan Khazai, Friedemann Wenzel, Anthony Patt, Kevin Fleming. 2014. Multi-hazard and multi-risk decision support tools as a part of participatory risk governance: Feedback from civil protection stakeholder. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221242091300068X
Note: This article gives the views of the interviewee, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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