About

Over the last decades, natural hazard losses have been reported to be on the increase considerably in European mountain regions. While it is undoubted that climate change increases magnitudes and frequencies of many hazard triggers, other reasons underlying loss dynamics such as changes in exposure and positive effects of technical mitigation as a way to adapt to the effects of climate change still remain insufficiently explored. The project EMERGENCE will contribute to closing these gaps by assessing the spatio-temporal dynamics of climate triggers responsible for torrential loss events, by assessing the effects of technical hazard mitigation and exposure on loss dynamics, as well as their mutual interdependencies on the resilience of mountain societies in Austria. Specifically, EMERGENCE will (a) identify the importance and the dynamics of meteorological triggers affecting the frequency of torrential loss events and their occurrence patterns in Austria, (b) assess the influence of technical hazard mitigation measures on the occurrence of these events, (c) quantify the exposure dynamics of elements at risk based on an assessment of the building stock and on construction activities focussing on different building categories, and (d) map resilience patterns and pathways based on a coupled human-landscape model to unveil the mutual dependencies between (a) to (c) and to provide insights into governance arrangements necessary for an evidence-based adaptation and transformation of mountain communities towards a resilient society.

EMERGENCE is targeting at (1) unveiling geoclimatic subregions of Austria, including an exploratory analysis of potential changes during the last two climatological normals; (2) the derivation of region-specific weather patterns triggering torrential loss events; (3) an assessment of spatio-temporal exposure and mitigation patterns; (4) a susceptibility analysis for torrential flooding conducted on a catchment level, allowing for an assessment of the main risk drivers (climate, geomorphometry, exposure, technical hazard mitigation) and their interdependencies with torrential loss events. In doing so, EMERGENCE will consider the dynamic relationships within and between human and natural systems from the perspective of a coupled-human-landscape model. The model allows us to visualise dominant interactions and feedback loops to illustrate potential changes in risk. Tackling these challenges by addressing the gap between human-landscape interaction modelling and existing knowledge of stakeholders in hazard risk management will be based on a co-creation and co-development approach and include regional-based multivariate statistical learning methods. Expected outputs are data sets, software, and scientific publications, all of which will be published under a creative-commons license. The project output may further be used together with the new climate scenarios for Austria (ÖKS NEXTGEN) to assess expected future changes in hazard trigger patterns and the occurrence of torrential loss events.

EMERGENCE will finally contribute to the question of how transdisciplinary co-creation of knowledge in the context of a comprehensive multi-scale assessment of different climate and environmental triggers, geomorphometric catchment characteristics, mitigation efforts and exposure dynamics enables us to specify, quantify, understand, and interpret prevailing interactions and feedbacks leading to torrential loss events and, as such, the changing resilience of mountain communities. Thus, the results and gained insights can be incorporated in future adaptation strategies according to needs of the stakeholders.