University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Science Researchers Have Provided New Data on Risk Management (Land Use in Flood-Prone Areas and Its Significance for Flood Risk Management-A Case Study of Alpine Regions in Austria): Risk Management

2022 APR 07 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Investigators discuss new findings in risk management. According to news originating from Vienna, Austria, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Increasing flood damage has led to a rising importance of land use in flood risk management policies, commonly referred to as the spatial turn in flood risk management.”

Funders for this research include Austrian Academy of Sciences Funder DOI: 10.13039/501100001822 Award: Earth System Science (ESS) research program University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Funder DOI: 10.13039/501100006380 Award: Doctoral School “Human River Systems in the 21st Century (HR21)”.

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Science: “This includes policies aiming at making space for rivers, which, in practice, lead to an increasing demand for land. Although research has been conducted on the variety of policies, the resulting land use conflicts in flood-prone areas have not been paid much attention to. This paper therefore analyses the current land use and its changes in Alpine flood-prone areas in Austria. The results show that space for rivers has been decreasing due to human activities (e.g., river straightening and channel narrowing) since the middle of the 19th century, and settlements have been expanding into flood-prone areas. Furthermore, the share of valuable agricultural land (which is important for food production) located in flood hazard zones is higher in more mountainous areas. Given the limited space for permanent settlement in Alpine regions, these land use changes exert pressure on the availability of land suitable for flood risk management.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Therefore, making space for rivers as part of flood risk management policies faces considerable restrictions in Alpine areas.”

For more information on this research see: Land Use in Flood-Prone Areas and Its Significance for Flood Risk Management-A Case Study of Alpine Regions in Austria. Land, 2022,11(392):392. (Land - http://www.mdpi.com/journal/land). The publisher for Land is MDPI AG.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/land11030392.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Lena Junger, Institute of Spatial Planning, Environmental Planning and Land Rearrangement, Department of Landscape, Spatial and Infrastructure Sciences, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Science, 1190 Vienna, Austria. Additional authors for this research include Severin Hohensinner, Karin Schroll, Klaus Wagner, Walter Seher.

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