DIAMOND - Delivering the next generation of open Integrated Assessment MOdels for Net-zero, sustainable Development

Integrated assessment models (IAMs) are providing insight into how socioeconomic behaviour influences climate change and guiding policymaking. Although IAMs have advanced significantly, their design, implementation and capabilities have been criticised for failing to tackle new questions or ones that have not been addressed with respect to the Paris Agreement and the net zero aim. The EU-funded DIAMOND project will update, upgrade, and fully open six IAMs that are emblematic in scientific and policy processes, improving their sectoral and technological detail, spatiotemporal resolution, and geographic granularity. It will further enhance modelling capacity to assess the feasibility and desirability of Paris-compliant mitigation pathways, their interplay with adaptation, circular economy, and other SDGs, their distributional and equity effects, and their resilience to extremes, as well as robust risk management and investment strategies. This will be done via integration of tools and insights from psychology, finance research, behavioural and labour economics, operational research, and physical science. DIAMOND will develop a transdisciplinary scientific approach to legitimise the implementation process and co-create research questions that stretch the frontiers of climate science, as well as establish vibrant communities of practice to transparently open model enhancements and to develop capacities, thereby lowering the entrance barriers to the established IAM community.

The project started in December 2022 and is expected to run until November 2026.

Project Coordinator: Dr. Alexandros Nikas, Institute of Communications and Computer Systems (ICCS), NTUA, Greece