Vanessa Schweizer (She/Her)

Vanessa Schweizer is an Associate Professor of Knowledge Integration in the School of Environment, Resources, and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. She is a former director of the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation, a member of the Waterloo Climate Institute, and a Science Advisory Board member for the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. She has previously held visiting appointments at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the USA and the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany. She has been a collaborator with the CIB (cross-impact balances) Lab at the University of Stuttgart since 2006. As a graduate student, she was a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Fellow at The National Academies in the USA. She is a biracial descendent of four generations of German Swiss settlers and one generation of Chinese immigrants to these lands now called North America.

• human dimensions of climate change

• scenarios

• science, technology, society

• carbon dioxide removal

• climate intervention

• deep uncertainty

• risk analysis

Dr. Schweizer's research focuses on decision-making under uncertainty, namely the problem of near-term decision-making in the context of long-term consequences. She has considered this problem with respect to climate change and long-term technology planning (e.g., projecting energy demand, carbon dioxide removal). In these fields, scenarios are often used to make sense of complex and ‘slow-moving’ problems.

Anticipating long-term consequences is difficult because history may not be a helpful guide for future risks. This is especially true under disruptive conditions. Nevertheless, history powerfully shapes perceptions of what alternative futures are considered plausible, and such perceptions can be deceiving. Dr. Schweizer applies and develops novel methodologies (namely cross-impact balances; see https://cross-impact.org/english/CIB_e.htm) for discovering internally consistent scenarios that can be surprising because they are not obvious or are difficult to imagine (so-called ‘black swans’ and ‘perfect storms’). Her primary motivation for this work is to ensure that policy discussions about environmental or social risks are not artificially constrained by either wishful thinking or lack of imagination.

Recognizing her contributions to scenarios used to structure interdisciplinary climate change research, she was invited by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) in the USA to contribute to an online module featured on this page entitled "Creating Socio-Environmental Scenarios". The module is based on one of her co-authored publications, Elsawah et al. (2020).

• 2010, Doctorate, Engineering and Public policy, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

• 2007, Master (MES), Environmental Studies, The Evergreen State College, USA

• 2001, Bachelor of Science (BSc) magna cum laude, Physics (with Minors in Mathematics, Philosophy, Speech Communication), University of Nevada, USA

• 2025-Present Review Editor, Seventh Assessment Report (Contribution of Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 3: Projected Futures in the Context of Sustainable Development and Climate Change), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

• 2019-2024 Member, Global Young Academy

• 2018-2021 Council Member, Society for Risk Analysis

• 2014 Contributing Author, Fifth Assessment Report (Contribution of Working Group II: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Vol. 2, Chapter 21: Regional Context), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

• 2014-15 Editor-in-Chief's pick for most influential paper of 2014-15 (with E.A. Lloyd), Synthese

• 2012 Publisher’s pick for Best Paper of October 2012 (with E. Kriegler), Environmental Research Letters

• 2020-25 Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Knowledge Integration

• 2020-23 Director, Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation

• Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty Society

• International Environmental Modelling and Software Society

• Society for Risk Analysis

• 2026-Present Co-Chair of the Scenario Evolution Process Working Group, International Committee on New Integrated Climate Change Assessment Scenarios (ICONICS)

• 2024-Present Chair of the Canadian Regional Group, Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty Society

• 2019-Present Steering Committee Member, ICONICS

• ENVS 178 - Environmental Applications of Data Management and Statistics
  • Taught in 2024
• ENVS 195 - Introduction to Environmental Studies
  • Taught in 2026
• INDEV 212 - Problem-solving for Development
  • Taught in 2021, 2022
• INTEG 121 - Collaboration, Design Thinking, and Problem Solving
  • Taught in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026
• INTEG 420B - Senior Honours Project B
  • Taught in 2022, 2025
• INTEG 441 - Hard Decisions and Wicked Problems
  • Taught in 2022, 2023
• INTEG 475 - Special Topics in Knowledge Integration
  • Taught in 2024
• INTEG 499 - Independent Studies
  • Taught in 2023
• INTEG 641 - Hard Decisions and Wicked Problems
  • Taught in 2022, 2023

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Lazurko, A., Schweizer, V., Pintér, L., Ferguson, D. (2023) Boundaries of the future: A framework for reflexive scenario practice in sustainability science. One Earth, 6 (12), 1703-1725. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2023.10.027

• Lazurko, A., Schweizer, V., Armitage, D. (2023) Exploring “big picture” scenarios for resilience in social–ecological systems: transdisciplinary cross-impact balances modeling in the Red River Basin. Sustainability Science, 18, 1773-1794. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-023-01308-1

• Schweizer, V.J., Ebi, K.L., Vuuren, D.P. van, Jacoby, H.D., Riahi, K., Strefler, J., Takahashi, K., Ruijven, B.J. van, Weyant, J.P. (2020) Integrated Climate-Change Assessment Scenarios and Carbon Dioxide Removal. One Earth 3, 166–172. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.08.001

• Elsawah, S., Hamilton, S., Jakeman, T., Rothman, D., Schweizer, V., Trutnevyte, E., Carlsen, H., Drakes, C., Frame, B., Fu, B., Guivarch, C., Haasnoot, M., Kemp-Benedict, E., Kok, K., Kosow, H., Ryan, M., van Delden, H., (2020) Scenario processes for socio-environmental systems analysis of futures: A review of recent efforts and a salient research agenda for supporting decision making. Science of The Total Environment, 729, 138393. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138393

• Schweizer, V.J. (2020) Reflections on cross-impact balances, a systematic method constructing global socio-technical scenarios for climate change research. Climatic Change. Editorial essay for a Special Issue on “Integrated Scenario Building in Energy Transition Research.” https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-019-02615-2

• Lloyd, E.A. and V.J. Schweizer (2014) Objectivity and a comparison of methodological scenario approaches for climate change research. Synthese 191: 2049-2088. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-013-0353-6

• Schweizer, V.J. and O’Neill, B.C. (2014) Systematic construction of global socioeconomic pathways using internally consistent element combinations. Climatic Change 122, 431–445. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-013-0908-z

• Schweizer, V.J. and E. Kriegler. (2012) Improving environmental change research with systematic techniques for qualitative scenarios. Environmental Research Letters 7: 044011. https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044011