1. Systems Analysis Forum (SAF)
Elena Rovenskaya & Ulf Dieckmann (co-leaders)
Institutional Review Panel Visit, 8-9 May 2017

2. SAF in IIASA’s Research Plan 2016-2020
IIASA’s Systems Analysis Forum (SAF) will facilitate and catalyze methodological research at IIASA:
Ongoing methodological innovations to support IIASA’s leadership in the systems analysis of global and universal problems
Innovation in interdisciplinary and integrated perspectives
Co-development with applied research activities at IIASA

3. SAF in IIASA’s Research Plan 2016-2020
The SAF follows a twofold approach:
All IIASA programs develop methods and tools in different ways — SAF will help to consolidate and support these activities and thereby optimize the cross- fertilization of methodological and applied research at IIASA
Dedicated SAF activities will promote exchanges among IIASA researchers and methodological experts around the world, accelerating knowledge transfer and methodological inspiration

4. SAF in IIASA’s Research Plan 2016-2020
Methodological areas where radically new approaches are needed:
Decentralized decision-making and bounded rationality
Compounding uncertainties and systemic risks
Nonlinearities and regime shifts
Social interactions and collective phenomena
Spatial hierarchies and network dynamics
Synergisms and antagonisms across multiple objectives
Scientific visualization and communication …

5. EXTERNAL CORE ACTIVITIES
SAF Strategy
Combining internal and external core activities with satellite activities, to build synergies between in-house capacity, world-leading experts, and NMO interests for boosting systems analysis
Bi- and multi-lateral NMO projects on systems analysis
EXTERNAL CORE ACTIVITIES
Systems-analysis conferences Systems-analysis courses
Partnership with Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSHV)
INTERNAL CORE ACTIVITIES Exploratory projects Visiting scholars …
Workshops on systems analysis with NMO countries …

6. Internal Core Activities
Visiting Scholars: Inviting world-leading experts in strategically chosen areas of systems analysis for lectures and discussions with programs
Status
Currently organized at program level
Exploratory Projects: Regular internal calls for year-long small-scale exploratory projects, which are to be highly innovative in methodology and/or application and should ideally cut across two or more IIASA programs
2013 call – 13 submitted, 5 selected for funding
2016 call – 26 submitted, 8 selected for funding
Synergies with programmatic
and cross-cutting research

7. SAF Exploratory Projects Selected in 2013
Development of robust rescaling methods for integrated water, food, energy security management under uncertainty – ASA & ESM
Reconsidering models of catastrophic risk – RPV
A maximum likelihood analysis of a stochastic agent-based model of the global energy system – TNT & ASA
Systematic misperceptions of systemic risk – ASA & EEP
Analysis of close-to-optimal zones in LP decision-support models – MAG, ASA & ESM

8. SAF Exploratory Projects Selected in 2016
Economic migration, capital flows, and welfare – ASA & POP
FRED - Freedom, Emergence and Dimensions: Exploring contributions from Ergodic Theory of Chaos to Systems Analysis – ESM & ASA
Navigating the Pareto front: Understanding economic-environmental tradeoffs under value diversity among stakeholders – EEP, ASA & ESM
Integrated assessment tools as multi-layer networks – AIR, WAT & ASA
A big-data approach to systemic risk in very large financial networks – RISK & ASA
Accounting for behavioral spillovers in the global adoption of sustainable technologies and lifestyles: toward next-generation scenario modeling – ENE & TNT
Systems thinking for transformation - a scoping and prototyping project – ERCL, ESM, RISK & DI

9. External Core Activities
Systems-Analysis Conferences: International conferences attracting to IIASA’s premises world-leading experts in systems analysis, to communicate recent advances and forge new perspectives
Status
SA2015
53 speakers and chairs of sessions from 16 countries
Sessions ranged from new advances in systems analysis to trans- disciplinary inspiration in systems thinking to devising integrated solutions
303 registered participants from 30 different countries
1232 people from 67 countries viewed the webcast
98 poster presenters
153 people tweeted 718 tweets which reached a total audience of 333,637 twitter followers
Synergies with programmatic
and cross-cutting research

10. External Core Activities
Systems-Analysis Courses: Courses for young scientists organized at IIASA with lectures by leading researchers from IIASA and the IIASA network
Status
In planning phase
Several smaller courses have been held already, e.g., for young scientists from South Africa in April 2016 and for young scientists from Russia in November 2016
Synergies with capacity development activities
30-35 participants, 3-day programs of lectures, exercises, and discussions
For more information: events/ russiandelegation.html

11. Satellite Activities Workshops on Systems Analysis with NMO Countries
Status
With Santa Fe Institute: Workshop “Theory and knowledge systems for sustainability science” in October 2013
With Aalto University: Seminar “Frontiers of systems analysis” in November 2013
With NSF China: Conference “Evolution of cooperation” in April 2014
Bi- and Multi-lateral Projects on Systems Analysis with NMO Countries
In planning phase
and cross-cutting research and NMO engagement strategy
Synergies with programmatic

12. Satellite Activities
Partnership with Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSHV,
Status
Partnership established in 2016
The CSHV is a joint initiative of six Austrian research institutes and universities aiming at hosting, educating, and inspiring complex systems scientists who are dedicated to collect, handle, aggregate, and make sense of big data in ways that are directly valuable for science and society; focus areas include smart cities, innovation dynamics, medical, social, ecological, and economic systems
IIASA intends to engage with the CSHV network, to conduct joint research, and to co-organize workshops on topics of joint interest
Synergies with programmatic
and cross-cutting research

13. Thank you very much for your attention