Mar 17, 2014 | Alumni, Poverty & Equity, Young Scientists
Lanoi Maloiy is a PhD student at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, and a participant in the recently completed 2013-14 Southern African Young Scientists Summer Program (SA-YSSP), which IIASA co-organizes with the South African National Research Foundation and Department of Science and Technology at the University of the Free State in South Africa. In this interview Maloiy talks about her research and her experience in the program.
Lanoi Maloiy Photo Credit: Stephen Collett
Why did you apply for the SA-YSSP?
I applied for the Southern African Young Scientists Summer Program because I envisioned the program would assist my research, especially regarding ways to improve the quality of life for Africans.
I’m from Nairobi, Kenya and from the Maasai tribe. Coming from Africa, I am passionate about improving the quality of life for all of the continent’s citizens. The Maasai are a culture that traditionally didn’t often value sending girls to school, but my parents really stressed the importance of education.
I have seen very clearly in my own life how having access to education makes a difference, and how it really presents a limitation for those who don’t have access to education. Especially for girls, not having that education really limits their options. This experience made me very passionate about education as a transformative tool. I believe that education is an important tool in eradicating poverty and eliminating oppression.
Please tell us about your project for the SA-YSSP.
My research for the SA-YSSP explores the educational experiences of Kenyan female political leaders evaluating the role of education in their leadership journey. I investigated social, cultural and historical issues regarding African women and education, including the leadership context in Africa. My doctoral work is an interdisciplinary study within the fields of gender, education, and African leadership. The study investigates the experiences of Kenyan female political leaders, and focuses on locating enablers or strategies to address the challenges women face while accessing leadership positions.
During the program I worked with IIASA population researcher Dr. Anne Goujon and my South African adviser Dr. Petronella Jonck. Working with them gave my research a new social psychology perspective which really enriched my work, because I come from an education and a leadership standpoint, it broadened my research examining it from the perspective of social psychology, evaluating the interaction and dynamics of gender within society.
I believe that this study will be beneficial to policy makers, and leadership practitioners. More studies on women leaders in Africa are essential to provide a global account of the experiences of women in leadership.
What methods did you use to conduct your study?
I did largely a qualitative study analyzing face to face interviews with 18 women political leaders in Kenya, which I had conducted in 2013. I went to where the women leaders were based, often to their constituencies or in parliament. The interviews included demographic questions, asking them about their education, qualifications, age, and marital status. Then the second half of the interview was more open ended, asking about their leadership journey, about their family background, educational background, and what factors enabled them, and factors that inhibited them, and in particular evaluating the role of education and personality. The last section of the interviews focused more on recommendations, asking their opinion on strategies that could be put into place to help women better access leadership positions. In particular, what African society could do better in terms of accommodating women, and also asking participants why it is important to have women take part in leadership, and how women leaders can enrich African society.
I will be submitting my report at the end of this month, and we plan to also submit a journal article on the work.
How has the program changed the way you think about or do research?
The SA-YSSP has informed the way in which I communicate my research, ensuring simplicity and clarity, especially to interdisciplinary audiences. It has also equipped me as an early career researcher, with knowledge and skills to locate avenues for transforming and improving the lives of Africa’s citizens through research.
What was the best thing about the SA-YSSP?
The SA-YSSP programme was an exciting and capacity building process, which provided a rich experience for me as an early career researcher. It afforded me with an invaluable learning experience. Attending lectures on writing scientific papers, systems analysis, including practical ‘hands on’ training in media communication enriched and extended my skills base. Interacting with a range of PhD students brought a new wealth of knowledge and provided a vibrant social experience. I truly appreciated the opportunity to contribute and engage in research life during the course of the summer program.
Where do you hope to go with your research career?
I have a strong desire to be part of research that transforms the lives of Africans, in particular through education and leadership development projects. I believe that attending the SA-YSSP has proved an important step towards my long-term goal of creating leadership development programs to improve the quality of life for Africans.
Lanoi Maloiy, right, with other participants in the 2013-14 Southern African Young Scientists Summer Program (SA-YSSP) Photo Credit: Rene Van Der Berg
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.
Mar 12, 2014 | IIASA Network, Science and Policy
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network is an expert on economics, development, and sustainability, and a founding member of IIASA and European Forum Alpbach’s Global Think Tank, which is holding its first meeting in Laxenburg this week.
On Wednesday, 12 March Sachs will give a public lecture on the topic at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.
Jeff Sachs speaks at the Alpbach Forum in 2013. Photo Credit: European Forum Alpbach
IIASA: Your work spans a large area of research: from economics, to Earth science, to sustainable development. What is the common thread that ties all this together?
JS: The common thread is the challenge that we face on the planet. We can no longer separate economic, environment, and social challenges because we find that if we try to pursue any one of those alone, we end up jeopardizing the others.
For too long, economists have focused simply on economic growth, and clearly that strategy by now has put Earth and humanity at great peril. There’s no shortcut anymore. We have to be able to combine a vision that includes all the major dimensions of the complicated global reality that we face. Economics, divided societies, environmental crises, and rapidly changing geopolitics. It’s not simple to integrate all of these different areas. Our traditional intellectual disciplines do not accomplish that.
IIASA has been one of the world’s leading champions of this kind of integrated vision. Systems thinking applied to massive human problems, bringing together very diverse areas of natural science, social science, and I would say ethical considerations as well. This kind of holistic approach is central to IIASA’s whole strategy. That’s one of the reasons I’m so proud of my connection to the Institute.
What do you see as the biggest problems facing our planet?
We have become an enormously crowded and interconnected global society overnight, because of the technological reach of our economies and because of the remarkable growth of the world’s population during the last century. With 7.2 billion people on the planet now, we are putting vast parts of the biosphere and human well-being at dire risk. We are only slowly waking up to this reality.
All of history, humans have faced local challenges, but we have never faced such a confluence of massive global challenges at the same time. We don’t yet have the institutions, the insight, or the moral outlook to handle this set of challenges, and yet they are bearing down on us very fast.
In your lecture you’ll argue that it is realistic to think we could solve many of these challenges, for example, ending extreme poverty. What would need to be done to accomplish that goal, and why do you think it can be done?
When one thinks about the challenge of ending poverty you quickly realize that while the challenge is great, we also have unique positive opportunities. With the revolutions in communications technology, communities that until five years ago were isolated, impoverished, and with little prospect of escaping from poverty are now connected to global information, as well as to local markets and health clinics. Schoolchildren can get access to the world of information online. Finance has come to rural areas through mobile banking. All of these are examples of the kinds of breakthroughs that are now possible in addressing what have been extraordinarily tough problems of poverty.
We also see the poverty rate coming down now at an unprecedented speed, even in some of the poorest places on the planet. Major advances have been achieved in East Asia during the past quarter century, and increasingly, Africa too is now finally turning the corner on extreme poverty. I have argued that we could mobilize technologies and use directed investments in public health, education, infrastructure, and agriculture to make a decisive breakthrough within our generation.
In my book, “The End of Poverty,” I said that by 2025 we could end extreme poverty. I am afraid that the date is slipping a little because of the lack of concerted effort, but it’s notable for me and gratifying that the World Bank this past year adopted formally the goal of ending extreme poverty by the year 2030. And I believe that the United Nations member states will also adopt such a goal next year when they create the new Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs.
There are two huge risks that could absolutely defeat this possibility. One is the still greatly excessive population growth in some of the world’s poorest countries. The second is climate change, which left out of control will devastate large parts of the world including regions where many of the world’s poorest people live, for instance the arid regions of the world.
What about climate change? Do you think it’s really possible, at this point, to limit climate change to the internationally agreed target of 2 degrees?
I believe that we are at the very last chance to reach that goal. We have cliff ahead of us, with a sign that says, “Do not go beyond this point.” This point is the 2 degrees centigrade limit. We know from all the physical evidence and all the economic trends that we’re just within a hair’s width of exhausting the possibility of meeting that goal. And I worry that if we fail to achieve that goal we are going to slide very far and very fast down the mountainside, as it were. The world is negotiating a climate agreement in Paris in December 2015, and I believe that’s the very last chance to achieve the 2 degree centigrade goal.
I am not especially optimistic, but I don’t think that all is lost yet. Much depends on a much greater seriousness in the next year and ten months than we have shown in the last 22 years since the climate treaty was adopted.
Your lecture is entitled “The Age of Sustainable Development” what do you mean by that term? Why is now the time to be thinking about these topics?
I argue that we have entered an era when the concept of sustainable development has become the necessary concept for our time. When I say sustainable development, I mean on the analytical side the integrated vision of economic, social, and environmental dynamics; and on the normative side the shared goals of economic prosperity, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. I believe that we have a reasonable chance that this will be formally recognized by the UN member states in 2015, when they formally adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals.
My talk in Vienna is about why the concept of sustainable development is so important, and what it means. It’s not a household phrase, and I think there is a tremendous amount of public education that will be needed to understand what the opportunities are and what the threats that we face in this generation are. My basic point is that every generation faces its distinct challenges and sustainable development is our distinct challenge.
What do you see as the role for researchers and for institutions like IIASA in solving these global challenges?
I believe that these problems are inherently complex because they are about managing interconnected complex systems. There’s nothing simple about the world economy, nothing simple about global social dynamics, and nothing simple about interconnected Earth systems. And yet we have to master the risks that attend to each of those and the interconnections among them. It’s quite obvious in that regard that IIASA has a unique role to play. IIASA has been in the forefront of climate modeling, demographic modeling, and agricultural modeling for many years. I’ve been a huge admirer of the Institute’s work, and I look forward to working more closely with IIASA in the future.
I’ve been tasked by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon with helping to organize a global network of problem solving on sustainable development. This initiative is called the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). IIASA will be a very important member and I would say leader of that effort, and IIASA’s Director General, Pavel Kabat, is a member of the leadership council of the SDSN. We have already begun to strategize on this with Pavel Kabat, IIASA Deputy Director General Nebojsa Nakicenovic, and many of IIASA’s world class researchers. There’s a tremendous timely opportunity to work with governments around the world and work with the United Nations to help identify safe pathways ahead.
Jan 14, 2014 | Citizen Science, Environment
Steffen Fritz has just been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant to fund a research project on crowdsourcing and ground data collection on land-use and land cover. In this interview he talks about his plans for the new project, CrowdLand.
Farmers in Kenya are one group which the Crowdland Project aims to involve in their data gathering. Photo credit: Neil Palmer, CIAT
What’s the problem with current land cover data?
There are discrepancies between current land cover products, especially in cropland data. It’s all based on satellite data, and in these data, it is extremely difficult to distinguish between cropland and natural vegetation in certain parts of the world if you do not use so-called very high resolution imagery, similar to a picture you take from space. With this high-resolution data you can see structures like fields and so on, which you can then use to distinguish between natural vegetation and cropland. But this is a task where currently people are still better at than computers–and there is a huge amount of data to look at.
In our Geo-Wiki project and related efforts such as the Cropland Capture game, we have asked volunteers to look at these high-resolution images and classify the ground cover as cropland or not cropland. The efforts have been quite successful, but our new project will take this even further.
How will the new project expand on what you’ve already done in Geo-Wiki?
The big addition is to go on the ground. Most of the exercises we currently do are based on the desktop or the phones, or tablets, asking volunteers to classify imagery that they see on a screen.
What this project aims to do is to improve data you collect on the ground, known as in-situ data. You can use photography, GPS sensors, but also your knowledge you have about what you see. We will use volunteers to collect basic land cover data such as tree cover, cropland, and wetlands, but also much more detailed land-use information. With this type of data we can document what crops are grown where, whether they are irrigated, if the fields are fertilized, what exact type of crops are growing, and other crop management information which you cannot see in satellite imagery. And there are some things you can’t even see when you’re on the ground, thus you need to ask the farmer or recruit the farmer as a data provider. That’s an additional element this project will bring, that we will work closely with farmers and people on the ground.
For the study, you have chosen Austria and Kenya. Why these two countries?
In Austria we have much better in situ data. For example, the Land Use Change Analysis System (LUCAS) in Europe collects in situ data according to a consistent protocol. But this program is very expensive, and the agency that runs it, Eurostat, is discussing how to reduce costs. Additionally the survey is only repeated every three years so fast changes are not immediately recorded. Some countries are not in favor of LUCAS and they prefer to undertake their own surveys. Then however you lose the overall consistency and there is no Europe-wide harmonized database which allows for comparison between countries. Our plan is to use gaming, social incentives, and also small financial incentives to conduct a crowdsourced LUCAS survey. Then we will examine what results you get when you pay volunteers or trained volunteers compared to the data collected by experts.
In Kenya, the idea is similar, but in general in the developing world we have very limited information, and the resources are not there for major surveys like in Europe. In order to remedy that the idea is again to use crowdsourcing and use a “bounded crowd” which means people who have a certain level of expertise, and know about land cover and land use, for example people with a surveyor background, university students, or interested citizens who can be trained. But in developing countries in particular it’s important to use financial incentives. Financial incentives, even small ones, could probably help to collect much larger amounts of data. Kenya is a good choice also because it has quite a good internet connection, a 3G network, and a lot of new technologies evolving around mobile phones and smartphone technology.
What will happen with the data you collect during this project?
First, we will analyze the data in terms of quality. One of our research questions is how good are the data collected by volunteers compared to data collected by experts. Another research question is how can imperfect but large data collected by volunteers be filtered and combined so that it becomes useful and fulfills the scientific accuracy requirements.
Then we will use these data and integrate them into currently existing land use and land cover data, and find ways to make better use of it. For example, in order to make projections about future land-use and to better quantify current yield gaps it is crucial to get accurate current information on land-use, including spatially explicit information on crop types, crop management information and other data.
Once we have done some quality checks we will also make these data available for other researchers or interested groups of people.
Crowdsourcing for land cover is in its infancy. There have been lots of crowdsourcing projects in astronomy, archaeology, and biology, for example, but there hasn’t been much on land use, and there is huge potential there. ”We need to not only better understand the quality of the data we collect, but also expand the network of institutions who are working on this topic.”
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.
Jan 7, 2014 | IIASA Network, Systems Analysis
On October 15, 2012, a young man from Bangladesh named Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ahsan Nafis parked next to New York Federal Reserve Bank in a van with what he believed was a 1000-pound bomb, walked a few blocks away, and then attempted to detonate the bomb by mobile phone.
In fact, the bomb was a fake, supplied by undercover agents for the United States FBI. The agents, posing as radical jihadists, had led Nafis along for months, allowing him to believe they were fellow terrorists and gathering information about his plot. The cover was maintained until the moment when his bomb failed to detonate, and Nafis was arrested. Disaster averted.
Researchers at IIASA study many risks to society, from floods, hurricanes, and natural disasters, to the impacts of climate change on future generations. They use models that can help disentangle the costs and benefits of different policies that could help prevent damage or deaths, or mitigate the impacts of global problems like climate change and air pollution. Could the same techniques apply to the dangers of terrorism and jihadists attacks? Could systems analysis help inform intelligence agencies in order to stop more terrorist attacks?
Could systems analysis techniques help guide policies to prevent terrorist attacks? Image Credit: Vjeran Pavic
Yale University Professor Ed Kaplan has done just that in work that he presented at IIASA in late December 2013. His research, which has intersected with IIASA in the past through collaborations with former IIASA Directors Howard Raiffa and Detlof von Winterfeldt, uses operations research to find ways to improve intelligence operations so as to catch more terrorists, before an attack can take place.
Kaplan, an expert on counterterrorism research, refined a simple economic model of customer service, known as a “queuing model” to instead represent the evolution of terror plots by terrorists, and interaction between the terrorists and the undercover agents who are working to uncover those plots.
“The best way to stop an attack is to know it’s about to happen beforehand,” says Kaplan. That means, in large part, having enough agents in the right places to detect attacks. But how many agents is the right number?
At IIASA, Kaplan described his terrorist “queuing model,” which can be applied to show how much a given number of agents would be likely to decrease attacks. Queuing models are an operations research method used to understand waiting times in lines, such as what happens at restaurants, offices, telephone queues or even internet servers.
But in the standard model, customers want to be served, and the servers know who the customers are. In Kaplan’s terrorist model, the terrorists – customers –don’t want to be served, and the servers—the agents—don’t know where their customers are. By modifying the model to account for those differences, Kaplan can answer some tricky questions about the best way for intelligence agencies to fight terrorism.
“Even if you don’t know how many terrorists there are or where they are, you can make it more likely that they will show themselves, you can make it more difficult for them to carry out an attack,” says Kaplan.
Kaplan’s method provides estimates of the numbers of undetected terrorist plots, as well as what it would take to increase detection rates.
Using data from court records of terrorism cases, Kaplan refined his models to include the average time that a terror plot is active – that is, the time from when a terrorist group first starts a plot, to the time that they are either caught, or the attack takes place. Based on the data, he could then calculate how many terror plots were likely to be in progress at any one time. He could also estimate the probability of detecting those plots, and how much that probability could be increased by employing more agents. For example, the model calculates that by increasing FBI agents by a factor of two would increase the detection rate from 80% to 89%.
But the data also point to one disturbing conclusion: A 100% detection rate is impossible. As the number of agents increases, the detection rate increases in ever smaller increments. Kaplan says, “We have to decide how safe is safe enough. When should we stop putting money into Homeland Security, and start putting more back into education and health?”
Download Kaplan’s IIASA presentation (PDF, 2.8 KB)
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.
Dec 19, 2013 | Air Pollution, Demography, Environment
By Erich Striessnig, Research Assistant, IIASA World Population Program
We have all heard about the terrible air pollution in India’s cities. Average concentrations of particulate pollution exceed World Health Organization guidelines through most of India, most of the time. So why hasn’t anything been done? Is it really too expensive?
In a recent publication with fellow IIASA Population Program researcher Warren Sanderson and IIASA Mitigation of Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases Program researchers Wolfgang Schöpp and Markus Amann, we set to find out. In the study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, we showed that in fact, policy reforms in India targeted at reducing emissions of dangerous fine particulate matter could save thousands of lives, and at the same time save money.
Air pollution in India exceeds World Health Organization limits much of the time, which contributes to health problems and premature deaths. Photo Credit: Mark Danielson via Flickr (Creative Commons License)
Due to their very small size, small particles released by cars, factories, and other combustion can travel very deep down into people’s lungs and cause or worsen all sorts of health issues. In Indian cities, where concentrations of these pollutants are already quite high, the expected increase in economic output over the next two decades will be accompanied by an enormous increase in air pollution, leading to a higher number of sick days or even deaths.
Both of these effects could be prevented or at least reduced if stricter regulations on emission limits – already in place in other countries – were imposed. The new study shows that if India enacted pollution controls as stringent as according to European legislation, by the year 2030, the end of the study period, up to 2.5 million premature deaths would be prevented.
So how do pollution controls save money? Healthier people are more productive because they are sick less often. People who can expect to live longer in a cleaner environment are more likely to make investments which would again create jobs and boost the economy. Our study shows that by 2030 such investments would in fact more than pay for themselves, when the economic benefits of a healthier population are considered.
So why haven’t politicians started doing something already much earlier? One answer might be that such reforms initially only produce costs, whereas the benefits typically don’t crystallize before the next elections. Hopefully, this latest scientific evidence from a collaboration of IIASA population and air pollution researchers can offer these politicians an impetus to act. Read more on the IIASA Web site.
Reference Warren Sanderson, Erich Striessnig, Wolfgang Schoepp, and Markus Amann. 2013. Effects on Well-Being of Investing in Cleaner Air in India. Environmental Science and Technology. 47 (23), pp 13222–13229 DOI: 10.1021/es402867r
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.
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