International Symposium on Mitigative Measures against Snow ...

<strong>International</strong> <strong>Symposium</strong> on Mitigative Measures against Snow Avalanches
Egilsstaðir, Iceland, March 11–14, 2008
Figure 1 Typical U-shaped inner Alpine valley with scattered settlements, protection forest
on the steep valley slopes and avalanche starting areas above.
Avalanche winter 1998/99, the floods in June 1999 and 2005 in the western part of Austria
and the flood in 2002 in the eastern and northern part of Austria have instigated a public and
political discussion about new strategies in protection against natural hazards under the
prospect of possible climate change. The first short term political reaction was to increase the
public funding for technical and forest biological protection work by an amount of 35 Mio
Euro/Year.
2. PRESENT CIRCUMSTANCES
2.1 Socio economy
The second part of the last century was a time period of intensive and manifold socioeconomical
changes in the Alps. According to Bätzing (1991) it was the most intensive
change in settlement pattern and inhabitant behaviour since the Neolithic revolution 5000
years before. Several mountain valleys in the Alps were abandoned due to a lack of working
places and hard living conditions. The need for high flexibility in the modern economy and
society requires permanent open roads and permanent reach ability. Other valleys, mainly
those with ski resorts have developed into regions with the highest population density in
Europe. Only 12% of the land is usable for settlement and economic purposes in western
Austria. While the growth of the population in Austria during the last century amounts to
34%, the growth of population in the same period in Tyrol, a western Federal County of
Austria, amounts to 153%. The number of tourist overnight stays increased by a factor of 20
during the last 50 years in Tyrol.
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