The IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment (ECE) Program seeks a strong candidate to support advancing the representation of social systems and behavioral factors in climate-economy-environment modeling.

background

ECE is one of the world’s leading global Integrated Assessment Modeling (IAM) teams, and works to deepen understanding of rapid, just, and feasible systems transformations toward environmental, social, and economic sustainability.

Continuing a long tradition going back to the institute’s foundation, ECE’s modeling tools stand at the heart of our integrated assessment capabilities, used to explore linked solutions for energy, food, land, and water. Interdisciplinary teams within ECE use these and complementary methods to study trade-offs and synergies between multiple policy priorities and objectives, typically across multiple sectors.

ECE’s scientific outputs inform international and national policy efforts related to climate change (e.g. implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement) and sustainable development (e.g.

pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals).

The role

Demand reduction through behavioral changes is considered an important mitigation option, and the crucial role of social systems in rapid decarbonization is increasingly acknowledged. Extending global models to explicitly capture bottom-up lifestyle and behavior changes, as well as human-earth system feedbacks will enable assessing the feasibility of widespread behavioral changes and social tipping mechanisms.

The successful candidate will contribute to developing modeling methods and data to study the social dynamics of low-carbon behavior changes, such as shifts to plant-based diets, emerging from lifestyle changes in relation to economic, environmental and political factors.

They will join and (co-)lead existing research efforts, while helping identify, plan, and create new opportunities and research directions, and will represent IIASA and ECE in the international WorldTrans and CHOICE projects funded by Horizon Europe, and collaborate with a wide network of leading scientists in modeling human and earth system feedbacks..

The work will include, but is not limited to:

• Extension of the FeliX system dynamics model to capture the individual, social, and structural factors behind lifestyle change for low-carbon consumption at a global level.
• Complementary qualitative and quantitative analysis of the feedback mechanisms leading to widespread behavioral changes and their cascading effects.
• Computational, model-based analysis of the impacts of large-scale behavioral changes on food and energy demand, and the key drivers or barriers of those.
• Design and execution of linkages between human and earth systems through collaborations with climate and economic system modelers.
• Design of an online simulation environment (in collaboration with developers) for user engagement in behavior change scenarios.

main tasks and responsibilities

• Contribute to the development of conceptual and formal system dynamics models of widespread behavioral changes for low-carbon food and energy consumption; source appropriate data/measures from diverse sources; implement scenario analyses.
• Contribute to the extension and maintenance of the FeliX simple integrated assessment model; apply the tool to address diverse research questions.
• Process large volumes of data on (inter alia) consumption statistics, consumer preferences and citizen attitudes, beliefs and values on climate change and climate policies; collaborate with other data analysts to quantify the models.
• Produce figures, maps, and visualizations to check results and efficiently communicate findings.
• Collaboratively develop model and data analysis code that is version-controlled, documented, and reproducible, to enable low-cost adaptation of methods for different contexts.
• Participate in and/or facilitate participatory modeling activities with international research partners and stakeholders.
• Present methods and results to both technical and non-technical audiences; write reports and scientific papers to communicate findings.

For further information about this opportunity please contact:

Sibel Eker, Senior Research Scholar, Sustainable Service Systems (S3) Research Group
or
Bas van Ruijven, Research Group Leader, Sustainable Service Systems (S3) Research Group

For general information about working at IIASA, please contact: recruitment@iiasa.ac.at

To apply for this opportunity, you will need to provide the following documents in English:

• A cover letter outlining your motivation for and fit to the position.
• A detailed Curriculum Vitae.
• The names, addresses (including e-mail), and telephone numbers of two reference givers.

Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position has been filled.