Poverty Alleviation by Mitigation of Integrated high mountain Risk

In central Asia, communities in peripherized mountainous border regions face difficult living conditions and suffer from lacking governmental support. The means for the mitigation of mountain geohazards are limited. However, the communities have learned to deal with high-frequency-low magnitude hazard events. On the other hand, there is very little awareness of remote geohazard events, originating far up in the mountains but causing major disasters in the valleys. Such events include glacial lake outburst floods (GLOFs) conditioned by glacier fluctuations and process chains induced by earthquake-triggered landslides. The objective of the present project is to generate and to transport knowlege on high-mountain hazards and the connected risks in order to contribute to more effective risk mitigation strategies. Natural-scientific and social-scientific approaches are combined: (1) identification of source areas of high-mountain geohazards: a first screening is done with GIS/Remote Sensing tools, critical areas are then surveyed from the helicopter and in the field; (2) derivation of impact scenarios of possible hazardous events, employing computer modelling tools; (3) based on the findings from the hazard assessment, implementation of risk mitigation measures in the communities.