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Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2002 |
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Günther Fischer International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis Günther Fischer is project leader and senior scientist at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Since 1995, he has been leading a major research project on Modeling Land Use and Land Cover Changes in Europe and Northern Asia (LUC). A primary research objective of this project is the development of a GIS-based modeling framework, which combines economic theory and advanced mathematical methods with biophysical land evaluation approaches to model spatial and dynamic aspects of land and water use. A geographical focus of the study has been China. Previously, he was principal investigator of the World Agriculture, Environment and Land Use Project and research scientist of the Food and Agriculture Program at IIASA. He participated in the formulation of a general equilibrium framework and the implementation and application of a global model of the world food systems, known as IIASA's Basic Linked System. He was a major contributor to two studies of the Food and Agriculture Programme: On welfare implications of trade liberalization in agriculture (Towards Free Trade in Agriculture, 1988); and on poverty and hunger (Hunger: Beyond the Reach of the Invisible Hand, 1991). He participated in an US-EPA funded multinational research project on climate change and world agriculture (Climate Change and World Food Supply, Demand and Trade, 1993), producing projections of the world food system for a range of climate change scenarios. In 1993 to 1996, Günther Fischer was a member of the IGBP-IHDP Core Project Planning Committee on Land-Use and Land-Cover Change (LUCC), and he is a co-author of the LUCC Science Plan. Since 1996 he has been serving on the Scientific Steering Committee of the joint LUCC Core Project of the IGBP-IHDP, and has been leading the LUCC Focus 3 office at IIASA concerned with developing an improved framework for regional and global land use studies. Since 1980 he has been collaborating with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the development, implementation and application of FAO's Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZ) methodology to national and regional resource appraisals. He served as consultant to a number of projects undertaken by UN organizations, in China, Ethiopia, Kenya, Pakistan and West Africa. In the context of these studies, Günther Fischer developed and applied multiple-criteria model analysis (MCMA) methods for district/province-level planning and decision support. These tools were designed to closely integrate with the AEZ methodology and databases. Günther Fischer holds degrees in mathematics and data/information processing from the Technical University, Vienna. |
