PIK Biennial Report 2000-2001 - Potsdam Institute for Climate ...

The Evolution of PIK’s Research Programme
The real research at PIK takes place not in the departments,
but in interdisciplinary projects that have all the
departmental know-how at their disposal. How did this
come to pass?
From Core Projects to TOPIKs
Relatively early, the classic structure of research organized
along departmental and mainly disciplinary lines was
rejected at PIK. It soon became clear that transdisciplinary
research cannot be organized in a traditional way.
The present research structure was arrived at in three
stages:
1) 1992-1994 stage of definitions
2) 1994-2000 Core Projects stage
3) from 2001 TOPIK stage
STAGE OF DEFINITIONS
Establishing the departments meant entering the stage of
definitions. How was PIK’s mission to be translated into
a work programme? First of all, the mission had to be
specified into concrete tasks, then the necessary knowhow
had to be identified. In addition, strategic partners
would have to be found and contacted, since the challenge
of PIK’s mission could only be met in alliance with
scientific partners.
CORE PROJECTS STAGE
Developing and implementing transdisciplinary Core
Projects constituted an essential step in the transition
from one-dimensional climate impact research to Earth
System Analysis, since it is only within a larger and more
complex scope that climate change impact may be investigated
successfully. The dynamics of global change have
to be taken into account, including both geobiophysical
and socio-economic processes of the Earth system.
In August 1994, nine Core Projects dealing with essential
issues of global change were selected from more than
twenty proposals. As shown in the following list, the
Core Projects investigated the Earth system from three
different perspectives: global, regional, and sectoral, featuring
important economic sectors:
Global perspective
POEM Potsdam Earth System Modelling
ICLIPS Integrated Assessment of Climate
Protection Strategies
QUESTIONS Qualitative Dynamics of Syndromes
and Transition to Sustainability
Regional focus
EUROPA European Network Activities
RAGTIME Regional Assessment of Global Change
Impacts Through Integrated Modelling
in the Elbe River Basin
WAVES Water Availability, Vulnerability of Ecosystems
and Society in Northeast Brazil
Sectoral view
AGREC Agro-economic Impacts of Climate
Change on German Agriculture in the
Context of Global Change
CHIEF Global Change Impacts on European
Forests
RESOURCE Social Dimensions of Resource Use -
Water Related Socio-economic Problems
in the Mediterranean.
DEFINING NEW CENTRAL RESEARCH AREAS (TOPIKS)
The sum of experience accumulated in the roughly five
years of successfully implementing the Core Projects led
to a new concept for a transdisciplinary research programme
that was to be even more strongly structured
with regard to strategy and content. Incidentally, this was
initiated by recommendations of PIK's Scientific Advisory
Board in late 1998, in connection with PIK's evaluation
by the Wissenschaftsrat (German Scientific Council)
presented the following year. Evaluating PIK's work and
progress as excellent, the Council in addition offered
several suggestions and recommendations about how to
proceed in the future.
Limiting research to those central areas of research in
which PIK already excels, and focusing projects - including
externally funded projects - on these areas, were
among the main issues.
This resulted in the "TOPIK 2k Research Programme":
Proposals were to be submitted internally and to be
approved for a limited period of time; previous core
projects were to be given one more year for their completion.
During the transitional stage, in which internal
contest of ideas was strongly encouraged, 51 proposals
were handed in, leading to the implementation of 26
PIK projects (cf Table 1 on page 26).
The TOPIK Stage (from 2001 to date)
Essential characteristics of the new research programme
are the following:
• definition of new thematic research areas called
TOPIKs (cf Tables 2 and 3),
25