Landslides in high-alpine environments – climate change impacts, exposure, and policy implications

Landslides cause fatalities and considerable loss each year in mountainous regions. With progressing climate change factors affecting landslides are projected to change in frequency and magnitude. CAUTION will focus on different landslide types and it is expected that climate change will influence the landslides processes due to glacier retreat, permafrost degradation, slope foot erosion due to flooding, extreme precipitation and snow melt periods, as well as extreme temperature fluctuations. Regarding possible adverse effects of mountain hazards to communities, exposure assessment poses particular challenges in climate change research, in policy development and governance. Thus, CAUTION will focus on exposure of societies affected by landslides on a local level, and determining the physical, economic, institutional and social aspects as well as the interactions between these. It will allow quantifying ex-post the spatio-temporal dynamics of exposure taking specific landslide types as an example as well as an ex-ante scenario-building to allow for identifying possible future risk pathways on a local and regional level. CAUTION is on the cutting edge of multiple disciplines (geosciences, climate sciences, economics, political sciences, disaster management) and develops deeper insights into the human-environment dimension of hazard management in mountain areas, and as such into an integrative assessment of climate change adaptation. The project will advance our understanding i) of critical meteorological conditions triggering landslides, and on how climate change will modify those mountain hazards, ii) on hazard and risk assessment strategies, as well as forecast capabilities, iii) on exposure of societies affected by landslides on a local level, by determining the physical, economic, institutional and social aspects as well as the interactions between these. Beside CAUTION will foster the collaboration and engagement between the scientific community and policy stakeholders.