Hail the Victorious Parasol

I tend to read a fair number of vampire novels in my spare time and am currently awaiting the next instalment of The Parasol Protectorate by Gail Carriger. It is a wonderful mix of werewolves, vampires, Victorian England and Steampunk.

I'd highly recommend the series to anyone who likes British humour and some fantasy thrown into the mix.

Reaching the Real World

Sometimes I think scientists live in this bubble that has small filtered interaction with the Real World. Its like the Ivory Tower idea though only slightly more grounded. We tend to believe our work will promote itself and that innovate ideas will naturally to adopted without resistance. (Yes I know it doesn't work like this in reality, but it would be nice).

IIASA is trying very hard to revamp their communications and marketing with the outside world. I was interviewed yesterday afternoon as part of an effort to provide info videos to future YSSP applicants. The Communications Team have been asking us questions throughout the Summer and have even stopped by for feedback.

This got me thinking, how do you raise the public profile of a research group as diverse as IIASA. It covers so many broad research areas that you cannot market it like you would a small research group with one focus. I mean even explaining "Applied Systems Analysis" takes a while.

Bibliothek

I know I've written about this before but I love the library at IIASA with its self check-out system, long-term loans (minimum 2 weeks, maximum a few years) its a marvel of efficiency in comparison to home. Maybe it is the contents I appreciate, the service just makes it better. The library is almost entirely made up of systems analysis, statistics, policy, modeling and decision-making textbooks, all helpful to my research.

The library has two reading rooms which in today's world of electronic journals and online books may soon become a thing of the past. The lighting fixture in the room is worth taking a peek at.

If you zoom in on the photo (not compulsory I promise), you'll see a multitude of yellow slips sticking out from between books. These indicate a book has been borrowed and by who.

Media Training - Know Your Media

IIASA offers a voluntary 4 hour workshop of how to present oneself to the non-specialist community, in this case journalists. The motivation is derived from the theory that the media is a powerful influence and creating a positive media profile can help with funding. Another is that if you fail to communicate your work others may do it for you and get it WRONG. Science is uncertain and we need to communicate the uncertainty better.

Before going into an interview remember the following:

• Know your interviewer
• What is your target audience
• What is your key message
• Why are you being interviewed?!

I've discovered through this process that scientists should have a 30 second pitch, the classic "elevator pitch". If it is prepared then you do not have to promote oneself (as scientists are notoriously bad at it) but the research area and implications/value for the public.

Remember:
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" - Albert Einstein

As the sun sets on another day at IIASA we have officially completed half of the YSSP. Scary thought. Yikes.

Science on Global Problem Area: Poverty & Equity

Today's seminar on Science on Global Problem Areas focuses on Poverty and Equity. This topic relates specifically to southern Africa and there are many questions and few answers. There are a few strategic research questions and themes presented by HGC, POP and ENE:

Understanding Poverty:

• Systems analytical approaches to poverty (different dimensions of poverty and their linkages)
  
• Implications of population and social dynamics on risk and vulnerabilities
• Welfare benefits of improved access to basic good, services and technologies

Understanding Equity:

• Analysing distributions;schemes for allocating scarce resources
• Impact of drivers of global change on distributions, risks and vulnerabilities
• Competing normative principles of fairness

Translating to Effective Policy:

• Circumstances under which policies achieve development goals
• Translating results from systems models
• Fairness of setting policy
  

POP presented a research area that looks at correlation between education and health care as a means to alleviate poverty. This is an interesting question: Can Education help solve poverty?
Africa (and South East Asia) features heavily in the worst end of the scale for mortality across the indices. It is well known (or is it?) that as your education level increases generally your income increases and hence your health. There is literature to back this up that a higher education makes more of a difference than higher income (examples: India, Indonesia) however there are a few countries where this correlation does not hold (example: Cuba). Many WHO survey graphs from 2004 were presented as a motivation but bizarrely South Africa did not show up on a single graph (Infant mortality, Mothers seeking pre-natal care etc). I asked and it seems SA is somewhere in the middle and hence frequently overlooked.

This seminar is especially interesting in light of a Poverty and Equity workshop to be held in South Africa in September. IIASA NMOs are being given an opportunity to listen to developing countries wish-lists. Why then South Africa if its not featured on the graphs? Because South Africa is going to be the nominated voice of the masses (i.e. SADC region). Does this make sense?

Something I have discovered is the POPNET newsletter published by the Population group at IIASA. The picture is from the latest newsletter that population growth to 2050 and the global education levels.

Applying Climate Information in Africa

I'm currently making my way through what seems to be a literature bible for applications of climate information in various African countries across sectors and scales: "Applying Climate Information in Africa, An assessment of current knowledge". The report was written by Anthony Patt of IIASA for NOAA. I would highly recommend it for anyone doing climate work in South Africa.

Wicked Problem

Today's presentation on the Science on Global Problem Area: Energy & Climate Change by IIASA highlighted their second strategic research plan stream. Climate change was described as a "wicked problem": messy problem with different definitions, no single solution. Officially a "wicked problem" is a phrase used in social planning to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems. I think its appropriate.

ENE (Energy Program) presented the current energy challenges. There is a growing demand for energy services (globally) that are reliable and has a secure supply. There are currently 2 billion people with access to energy sources. IIASA is looking at energy policies, savings and options available. There is a Global Energy Assessment will be released next year of which IIASA is a coordinator and author. Should be an interesting coffee table book :) The slide comes from the presentation given and highlights just how many factors one needs to consider and all the complexity of integrated assessments.

APD (Atmospheric Pollution and Economic Development Program) reviewed how costly/ambitious the Annex I Mitigation Pledges are and are they comparable between Parties? The costs of these pledges range from -0.3% to 0.1% of the GDP of each country at 2020. It seems the Ukraine has the highest cost saving but New Zealand seem to be losing out.

RAV (Risk and Vulnerability)
Anthony Patt of the Decisions and Governance Group within RAV revealed the two paths within RAV, adaptation and mitigation. One study of interest to me was done on Mozambique and its disasters. Using two different techniques; linear extrapolation of current trends and coupled-model ensemble projections they looked at disaster frequency. Interestingly enough the ensemble model projections show that Mozambique isn't going to have an increase in disaster frequency but the statistical models do show an increase...what/who do you believe? The picture on the left is taken from the cover of Options Magazine, a presentation of IIASA and its research to a non-specialist audience. The last issue talks about looking beyond Copenhagen and the current issue explores Green growth.

IME: Coping with Uncertainty: Concept of Robust Solutions

Tatiana Ermolieva (IME/LUC) presented what will probably be one of the most useful lectures of the YSSP for my research. Uncertainty is inherent in every decision one takes, how do you design a system that copes with it?

There are two types of systems (processes), one is the traditional natural system like physics that is governed by fixed relations, the other is human-related systems governed by old and new policies dependent on decisions of various agents/actors. From this we can distinguish knowable and unknowable (inherent: natural systems) uncertainties.

Human-related systems require a new approaches to stability (security) analysis. There are multiple reasons, the lack of observations, the expense of experimentation, observations contaminated by old policies and observations of results/impacts may come with a delay or cause irreversible change (climate change for instance)

Although its impossible to predict human-driven systems, it is possible to find robust solutions good against all uncertainties. These robust policies assist in the long-term stability of systems performance.

Popular security analysis includes aggregate analysis, least-squares analysis etc but these are not robust solutions, all are sensitive to outliers. I've appropriated the image above because it is one of the best examples I've ever seen of a mean/median/mode argument. The mean is in red, the median in green and the mode in maroon. Notice how most of the information is lost in the case of the mean. Remember: the mean is MEANINGLES! The median is more robust.
A common feature of most systems is a range of possible outcomes resulting from different scenarios or the variability (eg weather). The uncertainty is which scenario comes next?

I'm currently making my way through 'Coping with Uncertainty: Robust Solutions'. Its written by the IME group at IIASA and works through various techniques for robust systems mostly through real-world applications. The UCT library is in the process of buying a copy, it should arrive sometime in the next year :P

Podcasts: The gurus speak

IIASA Podcasts are fascinating to listen to as researchers here discuss the challenges we face within the next decade. The topics are diverse from Global Health to Climate Change. I particularly like the podcast by Buzz Holling on "Living with Transformation". If you have some free time, grab a podcast and become aware.

Book: Critical Mass by Philip Ball

For those of you who love the science of society, this book really is for you. I'm on my second read, the first time round I didn't finish it because of time constraints, but I recommend it to anyone no matter their field. Critical Mass delves into the question of how society emerges from individual actions and how one thing leads to another.