About us
The Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium is a voluntary organization of scientific research institutions that pursues scientific understanding of the issues associated with integrated assessment modeling and analysis.
The Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC) is an organization of scientific research institutions that pursues scientific understanding of issues associated with integrated assessment modeling and analysis. The IAMC was created in 2007 in response to a call from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for a research organization to lead the integrated assessment modeling community in the development of new scenarios that could be employed by climate modelers in the development of prospective ensemble numerical experiments for both the near term and long term.
Leaders from 3 institutions, John Weyant (Stanford Energy Modeling Forum, EMF), Nebojsa Nakicenovic (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, IIASA) and Mikiko Kainuma (Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies, NIES), invited other research organizations to join in the formation of the IAMC for the purpose of developing scenarios. The first task of the IAMC was to organize the research community to provide four scenarios, characterized by four different levels of radiative forcing in the year 2100 (see Moss, et al., 2008) and including data on emissions and concentrations of greenhouse gases, short-lived species, and aerosols, as well as associated land-use and land-cover, which could be used by the climate modeling community to develop new ensembles for the near and long term. Those four scenarios are referred to as Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs). In 2008 the IAMC met in Baden, Austria to discuss the development of the RCPs, which were at that time at a critical point in their development. During the period leading up to the IAMC annual meeting in September 2009 held in Tsukuba, Japan, the organization was lead by the founders with resources donated by their associated organizations. At and following the 2009 IAMC annual meeting, a more formal structure was proposed and adopted to allow for greater transparency, participation from the broad IAMC community, and flexibility to simultaneously undertake multiple activities and interactions.
Origins
The IAMC was established in 2007 in response to a request from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) for the research community to develop new integrated assessment scenarios. The IPCC had decided not to produce scenarios itself, and instead invited the modeling community to organise a coordinated effort. The consortium was formed to provide that coordination.
What began as a group of modeling teams working towards a shared set of scenarios has become the standing international forum for the integrated assessment modeling community — a place to compare models, agree on protocols, publish documentation and train the next generation of modellers.
What integrated assessment models do
Integrated assessment models (IAMs) combine representations of the energy system, land use and agriculture, the economy, and the climate system within a single consistent framework. Rather than predicting the future, they explore internally consistent pathways: what combinations of technology, policy and behaviour could deliver a given climate outcome, and at what cost.
The models differ widely in structure, resolution and scope. Some are detailed process models of the energy system; others are compact, analytically tractable frameworks used for exploring uncertainty. That diversity is deliberate — comparing results across models is how the community distinguishes robust findings from artefacts of one modelling approach.
How the consortium works
The IAMC has no central budget and no permanent staff. Its work is carried out by its member institutions, coordinated through a Scientific Steering Committee and organised into scientific working groups that anyone in the community may join.
Membership is institutional rather than individual, and is open to research organisations engaged in integrated assessment modeling. The consortium meets once a year at the Annual Meeting, and working groups meet more frequently through webinars and topical workshops.
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