International Experience
To increase global engagement and broaden interdisciplinary backgrounds, students may participate in a semester of training at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna, Austria.
The experience will:
- Contrast the ecological and social challenges faced by similar, yet strikingly different, river systems;
- Train students in current techniques in resilience theory, adaptive management and governance, watershed science, and policy;
- Lay the foundation for the next generation of European-American collaboration in interdisciplinary environmental science research.
European Coordinator
Dr. Jan Sendzimir, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Vienna, Austria
Austria Blog!
The first group of students (5) landed in Vienna, Austria on Sept. 25, 2011.
Keep up updated their activities by connecting to their blog.
Joana, Joe, Christina, Kristine, and Trisha will post items as time permits.
IGERT students will travel to IIASA (Applied Systems Analysis) in Vienna, Austria Vienna. Participants will engage in a variety of activities hosted at university, research institutes, and conference centers in one or more of the case study basins.
Activities will engage participants in a better understanding of adaptive management and decision making (theoretical and methodological), and may actually be applied in implementing the adaptive management process. These activities include: literature review, lectures, special focus seminars, group exercises, interactive computer models and games, and field visits and interviews with a diversity of stakeholders.
The first experience was September 2011 - December 2011. See the students' Blog. The second, and final experience is scheduled for fall 2013.
Schloss Laxenburg, just south of Vienna, is the Institute's headquarters. Photo courtesy of IIASA.
Participants will work directly with a diversity of actors who contribute to ongoing research projects that study and/or implement adaptive management processes in Europe. These actors include: scientists, agents of government and non-government organizations, and members of the business community. First priority for field visits will be to river basins with active adaptive management projects that fit with IGERT goals. Otherwise field visits will be to river basins where river decision processes have a potential to become adaptive (Pielach River), are not adaptive (Danube River), or appear to be in transition toward becoming adaptive (Tisza River, Oder River).
Dr. Jan Sendzimir and other faculty at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis will expose students to relevant cultural norms. Communication at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis is conducted in many languages, but English is commonly spoken.
