Demographic change and hydrological hazards: flood risk management in Alpine areas facing population decline and demographic ageing
- Wasser - Atmosphäre - Umwelt
- Lebensraum und Landschaft
- Ressourcen und gesellschaftliche Dynamik
Abstract
The project DemoHazAlps addresses the issue of demographic change and flood risk in Alpine areas. It aims to develop a better understanding of demographic change as a key driver transforming the patterns of risks and to provide a scientific basis for the development of risk management and adaptation strategies for Alpine areas facing population decline and demographic ageing. DemoHazAlps will address these objectives from an interdisciplinary perspective (of hazard and risk management, political science, and spatial planning) and draws on a broad methodological repertoire, integrating social science research methods with spatial analysis techniques. The project builds on the disaster risk community’s conceptual framing of risk and investigates the influence of demographic change on flood hazard exposure, vulnerability, and the capacity to cope with and adapt to extreme events. Research will begin by developing an analytical framework of demographic change and natural risk management. Through a macro-scale analysis of the dynamics of flood risk and population change in Austria, two Alpine municipalities will be selected for the empirical case study research. In the case studies, the exposure of buildings and residents will be assessed and mapped for different temporal scales on the basis of GIS-analysis, document analysis and semi-structured interviews. To assess the influence of demographic change on social and physical vulnerability the research team will conduct a GIS-based analysis of exposed buildings and a large-scale postal survey among flood-prone households. The capacity to cope with and adapt to extreme events under conditions of demographic change will be investigated through the analysis of legal and political documents and semi-structured interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders. Both case studies will be concluded with stakeholder workshops in order to inform the development of adaptation options for responding to the challenge of demographic change in natural hazards management.
- Demographie
- Risikomanagement
- Örtliche Raumplanung
- Vulnerabilität
Publikationen
Demographic Change and Natural Hazard Risk Management ─ a Disregarded Link? An Overview of Policy Perspectives from Austria
Autoren: Löschner, L; Clar, C; Fischer, T; Nordbeck, R; Thaler, T Jahr: 2018
PUBLIZIERTER Beitrag für wissenschaftliche Veranstaltung
Mitarbeiter*innen
Thomas Thaler
Priv.-Doz. MMag. Thomas Thaler Ph.D.
thomas.thaler@boku.ac.at
Tel: +43 1 47654-85412
Projektleiter*in
01.12.2017 - 31.03.2021