Hydro-climatic resilience of Austrian regional land - water systems

Extreme weather events cause substantial economic damage and social disruption. These climate-related risks will become even more severe in the future, driven by changes in the frequency and magnitude of natural hazard events. Agriculture and forestry are especially vulnerable against an increase of future climate-related extreme events, particularly in the context of hydroclimatic risks (river floods and torrents, and water scarcity and droughts). HydrATer focusses on the holistic governance and management of hydro-climatic risks to improve the social-ecological resilience of land-water systems. Societies need to adapt, and governments must prioritize, accelerate, and scale up their response mechanisms to extreme hydro-climatic events. This requires innovative governance and risk management to navigate uncertainty, reduce duplication, make more efficient use of public resources, and protect communities, economies, and ecosystems. HydrATer will develop a dynamic, integrated socio-ecological modelling framework to analyse the impacts of gradual climatic and socio-economic changes and extreme events on decision-making by land users, other sectors and local and regional decision-makers, and to determine the consequences for water quantity and quality and for the functions of aquatic ecosystems. A combination of models (land use decision making, hydrological and aquatic) will be developed together with regional stakeholders in a participatory process through a series of workshops and participatory scenario building. The model framework interactively demonstrates the impact of interventions in the regional system. The model will be a co-product and serve as a communication instrument and can be used as a decision-support tool by the stakeholders. HydrATer's innovative inter- and transdisciplinary approach integrates (i) different dimensions of resilience, (ii) specific institutional settings and (iii) specific adaptation needs and develops (iv) a decision support tool that analyses the impacts of climate change in combination with political interventions on the hydrological and aquatic system.