Landslides threaten most parts of the provincial state of Lower Austria and cause damage to agric... more Landslides threaten most parts of the provincial state of Lower Austria and cause damage to agricultural land, forests, infrastructure, settlements and people. Thus, the project "MoNOE" (Method development for landslide susceptibility modelling in Lower Austria) was initiated by the provincial government to tackle these problems and to reduce further damage by landslides. The main aim is to prepare landslide susceptibility maps for slides and rock falls and to implement these maps into the spatial planning strategies of the provincial state. Landslide susceptibility maps are either prepared by statistical (for slides) or empirical or process-based (for rock falls) approaches. Final maps are combined to a single landslide susceptibility map and optimised for the end-users (spatial planners and local authorities). It shows that a difference exists between the best scientific maps and the best maps for spatial planning purposes. This involves questions about the best number of susceptibility classes, its thresholds and ideal colours.
Landslide susceptibility modelling and implementation of the resulting maps is still a challenge ... more Landslide susceptibility modelling and implementation of the resulting maps is still a challenge for geoscientists, spatial and infrastructure planners. Particularly on a regional scale landslide processes and their dynamics are poorly understood. Furthermore, the ...
The study presents a GIS-based approach aiming at the identification of rockfall propagation area... more The study presents a GIS-based approach aiming at the identification of rockfall propagation areas considering the protective effects of forests in the Province of Styria, Austria. An empirical approach was selected to identify potential rockfall source zones. Based on a Digital Terrain Model derived from LiDAR data, threshold slope values for potential release areas were attributed to geotechnical units. The run-out distances were estimated by velocity calculation based on a one parameter friction model. The method was applied for the first time in such large study area. Friction coefficients were attributed to forestal units based on the detailed characterisation of relevant forest parameters derived from laserscanning data. Finally, two scenarios based on different friction coefficients were modelled: one considering the current forest cover and one assuming no forest cover. The results demonstrate the strong protective effect of the forest cover. Furthermore, an indicative hazar...
Die Geschichte der Veränderungen im Mölltal und in der Rauris stehen im Mittelpunkt des Buchs &qu... more Die Geschichte der Veränderungen im Mölltal und in der Rauris stehen im Mittelpunkt des Buchs "Zwei Alpentäler im Klimawandel“. Sie beginnt in der Vorvorvergangenheit, lange bevor der Mensch seinen Einfluss auf Klima und Landschaft geltend machen konnte, und endet in der Zukunft. Der Mensch hat die Mitregentschaft über Klima und Umwelt übernommen, er hat nun die Verantwortung zu tragen und vernünftige Maßnahmen zu setzen, damit das Klima nicht aus der Bahn gerät. Gleichzeitig hat er Vorkehrungen gegenüber etwaigen negativen Folgen einer Änderung zu treffen. Dazu ist es notwendig, Wechselwirkungen zwischen Klima, Landschaft und Wirtschaft umfassend zu verstehen und lokal- und regionalspezifische Herausforderungen zu erkennen
<p>With changing environmental conditions, the risk of landslides will also change.... more <p>With changing environmental conditions, the risk of landslides will also change. For the Styrian basin, Austria, we investigate how storylines of climate and land use/land cover change may affect future landslide susceptibility (2071-2100). Our analysis is based on two extreme rainfall events in Styria in 2009 and 2014, which triggered more than three thousand landslides causing a major threat to the local population and significant damage to settlements and infrastructure.</p><p>Furthermore, while the number of studies analysing the impact of climate and land use change on landslide dynamics is rising, the assessment of their uncertainties is still often neglected. However, the quantification of uncertainties is not only essential for the development of business strategies and policy interventions, but also for increasing transparency and confidence in scientific analysis. Therefore, we additionally analyse the joint contribution of climate change uncertainty and landslide model uncertainty for the developed storylines of landslide susceptibility.</p><p>We found for the worst-case storyline (4 K warming scenario) a substantial increase in highly susceptible areas due to much heavier rain. However, the estimated prediction uncertainties were generally high in all storylines. We discovered that the parametric landslide model uncertainty was of the same order as the climate scenario uncertainty, while uncertainties due to internal climate model variability were negligible. With an improved availability of event-based landslide inventories and high-resolution ground data, uncertainties in storylines of landslide susceptibility may be reduced.</p>
The assessment of uncertainties in landslide susceptibility modelling in a changing environment i... more The assessment of uncertainties in landslide susceptibility modelling in a changing environment is an important, yet often neglected task. In an Austrian case study, we investigated the uncertainty cascade in storylines of landslide susceptibility emerging from climate change and parametric landslide model uncertainty. In June 2009, extreme events of heavy thunderstorms occurred in the Styrian basin, triggering thousands of landslides. Using a storyline approach, we discovered a generally lower landslide susceptibility for pre-industrial climate, while for future climate (2071-2100) a potential increase of 35 % in highly susceptible areas (storyline of much heavier rain) may be compensated by much drier soils (−45 % areas highly susceptible to landsliding). However, the estimated uncertainties in predictions were generally high. While uncertainties related to within-event internal climate model variability were substantially lower than parametric uncertainties of the landslide susceptibility model (ratio of around 0.25), parametric uncertainties were of the same order as the climate scenario uncertainty for the higher warming levels (+3 K and +4 K). We suggest that in future uncertainty assessments, an improved availability of event-based landslide inventories and high-resolution soil and precipitation data will help to reduce parametric uncertainties of landslide susceptibility models used to assess the impacts of climate change on landslide hazard and risk. 1 Introduction Climate and land use/land cover (LULC) are changing worldwide, altering the risk of landslide occurrences. During the period from 1998 to 2017, landslides affected 4.8 million people causing more than 18,000 deaths and over 5.28 billion US$ total damages (Wallemacq et al., 2018). In the future, these landslide-associated casualties are likely to increase globally (Haque et al., 2019; Gariano and Guzzetti, 2021), and such an increase can already be observed in some regions (Schlögel et al., 2020). In the Alpine region and in Austria in particular, landslides are among the main natural hazards frequently causing damage to houses and infrastructure as well as casualties. Here they are conditioned by local geomorphology, geology and LULC, with long-lasting heavy rainfall and rapid snowmelt as the main natural triggers (Schweigl and Hervás, 2009). In southeastern 1
B1. Geologie und Geomorphologie Die geologischen Rahmenbedingungen spielen für das Landschaftsbil... more B1. Geologie und Geomorphologie Die geologischen Rahmenbedingungen spielen für das Landschaftsbild eine entscheidende Rolle. Verschiedene Gesteinstypen reagieren nämlich sehr unterschiedlich auf die Einflüsse erosiver Kräfte (z. B. Witterung, Fließgewässer, Lawinen, Gletscher). Auch die tektonische Beanspruchung der Gesteine im Zuge von gebirgsbildenden Vorgängen ist, etwa durch die Bildung von Schwächezonen oder die Schrägstellung der Schichten, ein landschaftsprägender Faktor. Daher ist das..
Landslides occur frequently and widespread in many regions of the world. Consequently, approaches... more Landslides occur frequently and widespread in many regions of the world. Consequently, approaches and methods on how to assess the spatial dimension of landslide occurrence is an important field of research. Of greatest interest is hereby to identify locations, where landslides might occur in the future. The spatial probability of landslide occurrence at a given location can be deduced from susceptibility maps. Besides a pure scientific interest, such information is of greatest value for numerous institutions which have to deal with or are responsible for a specific region and might have been affected by landslides. Such institutions include local and regional governments, geological surveys, insurance companies or spatial planning agencies, to name a few only. It is evident, that by introducing such maps into an official planning procedure, one has to ensure the highest possible reliability. Consequently landslide susceptibility maps should only be used if they are based on real la...
To avoid damage on infrastructure and loss of life, rockfall hazard zonation based on numerical s... more To avoid damage on infrastructure and loss of life, rockfall hazard zonation based on numerical simulation, has become an important tool for land use planning. Due to process-complexity and scale-dependency of input data, rockfall runout modelling is still subject to many uncertainties. Based on the specific geologic conditions (e.g. lithology, fabric, discontinuities, tectonics), detached block sizes at the cliff face vary significantly. Furthermore, released rock masses tend to disintegrate into fragments after the first impact. Depending on size and shape of the detached block and boulder/surface interaction, modelling trajectories of these fragments is a difficult task. A few sophisticated simulation tools are able to consider rebound-effects as well as macro-, and micro-topographic factors controlling lateral dispersion. However, these models require a set of high-precision terrain and vegetation roughness parameters – which are typically not available for large areas. We propo...
<p&amp... more <p>During 22-24 June 2009, Austria witnessed a rampant rainfall spell that spread across populated areas of the country. High-intensity rainfall caused 3000+ landslides in Feldbach, and property damages worth €10,000,000 in Styria itself. Numerous synoptic-scale studies indicated the presence of a cut-off low over the Adriatic and excessive moisture convergence behind the extreme event. In a warmer climate change scenario, such an extreme precipitation event may become more intense due to higher water holding capacity of air with increased temperatures, but this reasoning may not be so straightforward considering the complex physics of precipitation.</p> <p>Precipitation, as a natural atmospheric phenomenon, is dependent upon the dynamic and thermodynamic characteristics of the atmosphere. While it is safe to say that the thermodynamic characteristics of the atmosphere are relatively easier to simulate with confidence using available global models, the same cannot be said about the dynamics. This can be blamed on the chaotic non-linear behaviour of the atmosphere and problem in resolving sub-grid scale processes that reduce the model accuracy for longer spatial scales.</p> <p>CCLM regional model is used to study this extreme precipitation event. Our setup uses IFS data to calculate initial and boundary conditions for the simulations of the ‘present’ case where our attempt is to recreate the event over the same location as the original event. Further we use CMIP5 global climate models (at the RCP8.5) scenario. In particular, these will be applied in the ‘surrogate climate change’ method. Here, the climate change signals are calculated by computing the difference between the thermodynamic fields of the CMIP5 simulations for the future and the past. These climate change signals are applied to the original fields to obtain the ‘changed’ fields which are used to calculate new initial and boundary conditions resembling a climate-change future. A similar approach is to be applied for the ‘past’ case simulations.</p> <p>The idea behind this experimental setup is to establish a ‘storyline’ for the event as it would have occurred in the past, present and the future. The storyline approach provides an alternative to the traditional probabilistic approach for assessing risk enhancement and can serve to study responses of different mechanisms to climate change. The storyline approach also helps in decision-making as event-oriented risk management is easy for people to perceive and respond to. An associated landslide modelling study, which uses the precipitation output of our simulations as input, looks into the probable increased risks of landslides in the region and will directly aid the lives of those living in Southeast Austria.</p>
Within the frame of the ongoing project MoNOE (Development of Methods for Modelling Natural Hazar... more Within the frame of the ongoing project MoNOE (Development of Methods for Modelling Natural Hazards in the Province of Lower Austria) the generation of an indicative multi-hazard map to be used as a scientific reference for regional policies of land use management is one of the main objectives. The applicability and reliability of two relatively simple GIS-based approaches have been analysed aiming at the identification of areas which are potentially endangered by rockfall in a fast and cost-effective manner.
2007 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2007
... The use of a 'pseudo-stereo' QUICKBIRD imag... more ... The use of a 'pseudo-stereo' QUICKBIRD image pair, generated from the mono ... Map, Geocoding [5], Pansharpening [4], Topographic Normalisation [3], Derivation of Morphometric Terrain Parameters ... Finally, the results of the landslide hazard map are integrated into the ...
Landslides threaten most parts of the provincial state of Lower Austria and cause damage to agric... more Landslides threaten most parts of the provincial state of Lower Austria and cause damage to agricultural land, forests, infrastructure, settlements and people. Thus, the project "MoNOE" (Method development for landslide susceptibility modelling in Lower Austria) was initiated by the provincial government to tackle these problems and to reduce further damage by landslides. The main aim is to prepare landslide susceptibility maps for slides and rock falls and to implement these maps into the spatial planning strategies of the provincial state. Landslide susceptibility maps are either prepared by statistical (for slides) or empirical or process-based (for rock falls) approaches. Final maps are combined to a single landslide susceptibility map and optimised for the end-users (spatial planners and local authorities). It shows that a difference exists between the best scientific maps and the best maps for spatial planning purposes. This involves questions about the best number of susceptibility classes, its thresholds and ideal colours.
Landslide susceptibility modelling and implementation of the resulting maps is still a challenge ... more Landslide susceptibility modelling and implementation of the resulting maps is still a challenge for geoscientists, spatial and infrastructure planners. Particularly on a regional scale landslide processes and their dynamics are poorly understood. Furthermore, the ...
The study presents a GIS-based approach aiming at the identification of rockfall propagation area... more The study presents a GIS-based approach aiming at the identification of rockfall propagation areas considering the protective effects of forests in the Province of Styria, Austria. An empirical approach was selected to identify potential rockfall source zones. Based on a Digital Terrain Model derived from LiDAR data, threshold slope values for potential release areas were attributed to geotechnical units. The run-out distances were estimated by velocity calculation based on a one parameter friction model. The method was applied for the first time in such large study area. Friction coefficients were attributed to forestal units based on the detailed characterisation of relevant forest parameters derived from laserscanning data. Finally, two scenarios based on different friction coefficients were modelled: one considering the current forest cover and one assuming no forest cover. The results demonstrate the strong protective effect of the forest cover. Furthermore, an indicative hazar...
Die Geschichte der Veränderungen im Mölltal und in der Rauris stehen im Mittelpunkt des Buchs &qu... more Die Geschichte der Veränderungen im Mölltal und in der Rauris stehen im Mittelpunkt des Buchs "Zwei Alpentäler im Klimawandel“. Sie beginnt in der Vorvorvergangenheit, lange bevor der Mensch seinen Einfluss auf Klima und Landschaft geltend machen konnte, und endet in der Zukunft. Der Mensch hat die Mitregentschaft über Klima und Umwelt übernommen, er hat nun die Verantwortung zu tragen und vernünftige Maßnahmen zu setzen, damit das Klima nicht aus der Bahn gerät. Gleichzeitig hat er Vorkehrungen gegenüber etwaigen negativen Folgen einer Änderung zu treffen. Dazu ist es notwendig, Wechselwirkungen zwischen Klima, Landschaft und Wirtschaft umfassend zu verstehen und lokal- und regionalspezifische Herausforderungen zu erkennen
<p>With changing environmental conditions, the risk of landslides will also change.... more <p>With changing environmental conditions, the risk of landslides will also change. For the Styrian basin, Austria, we investigate how storylines of climate and land use/land cover change may affect future landslide susceptibility (2071-2100). Our analysis is based on two extreme rainfall events in Styria in 2009 and 2014, which triggered more than three thousand landslides causing a major threat to the local population and significant damage to settlements and infrastructure.</p><p>Furthermore, while the number of studies analysing the impact of climate and land use change on landslide dynamics is rising, the assessment of their uncertainties is still often neglected. However, the quantification of uncertainties is not only essential for the development of business strategies and policy interventions, but also for increasing transparency and confidence in scientific analysis. Therefore, we additionally analyse the joint contribution of climate change uncertainty and landslide model uncertainty for the developed storylines of landslide susceptibility.</p><p>We found for the worst-case storyline (4 K warming scenario) a substantial increase in highly susceptible areas due to much heavier rain. However, the estimated prediction uncertainties were generally high in all storylines. We discovered that the parametric landslide model uncertainty was of the same order as the climate scenario uncertainty, while uncertainties due to internal climate model variability were negligible. With an improved availability of event-based landslide inventories and high-resolution ground data, uncertainties in storylines of landslide susceptibility may be reduced.</p>
The assessment of uncertainties in landslide susceptibility modelling in a changing environment i... more The assessment of uncertainties in landslide susceptibility modelling in a changing environment is an important, yet often neglected task. In an Austrian case study, we investigated the uncertainty cascade in storylines of landslide susceptibility emerging from climate change and parametric landslide model uncertainty. In June 2009, extreme events of heavy thunderstorms occurred in the Styrian basin, triggering thousands of landslides. Using a storyline approach, we discovered a generally lower landslide susceptibility for pre-industrial climate, while for future climate (2071-2100) a potential increase of 35 % in highly susceptible areas (storyline of much heavier rain) may be compensated by much drier soils (−45 % areas highly susceptible to landsliding). However, the estimated uncertainties in predictions were generally high. While uncertainties related to within-event internal climate model variability were substantially lower than parametric uncertainties of the landslide susceptibility model (ratio of around 0.25), parametric uncertainties were of the same order as the climate scenario uncertainty for the higher warming levels (+3 K and +4 K). We suggest that in future uncertainty assessments, an improved availability of event-based landslide inventories and high-resolution soil and precipitation data will help to reduce parametric uncertainties of landslide susceptibility models used to assess the impacts of climate change on landslide hazard and risk. 1 Introduction Climate and land use/land cover (LULC) are changing worldwide, altering the risk of landslide occurrences. During the period from 1998 to 2017, landslides affected 4.8 million people causing more than 18,000 deaths and over 5.28 billion US$ total damages (Wallemacq et al., 2018). In the future, these landslide-associated casualties are likely to increase globally (Haque et al., 2019; Gariano and Guzzetti, 2021), and such an increase can already be observed in some regions (Schlögel et al., 2020). In the Alpine region and in Austria in particular, landslides are among the main natural hazards frequently causing damage to houses and infrastructure as well as casualties. Here they are conditioned by local geomorphology, geology and LULC, with long-lasting heavy rainfall and rapid snowmelt as the main natural triggers (Schweigl and Hervás, 2009). In southeastern 1
B1. Geologie und Geomorphologie Die geologischen Rahmenbedingungen spielen für das Landschaftsbil... more B1. Geologie und Geomorphologie Die geologischen Rahmenbedingungen spielen für das Landschaftsbild eine entscheidende Rolle. Verschiedene Gesteinstypen reagieren nämlich sehr unterschiedlich auf die Einflüsse erosiver Kräfte (z. B. Witterung, Fließgewässer, Lawinen, Gletscher). Auch die tektonische Beanspruchung der Gesteine im Zuge von gebirgsbildenden Vorgängen ist, etwa durch die Bildung von Schwächezonen oder die Schrägstellung der Schichten, ein landschaftsprägender Faktor. Daher ist das..
Landslides occur frequently and widespread in many regions of the world. Consequently, approaches... more Landslides occur frequently and widespread in many regions of the world. Consequently, approaches and methods on how to assess the spatial dimension of landslide occurrence is an important field of research. Of greatest interest is hereby to identify locations, where landslides might occur in the future. The spatial probability of landslide occurrence at a given location can be deduced from susceptibility maps. Besides a pure scientific interest, such information is of greatest value for numerous institutions which have to deal with or are responsible for a specific region and might have been affected by landslides. Such institutions include local and regional governments, geological surveys, insurance companies or spatial planning agencies, to name a few only. It is evident, that by introducing such maps into an official planning procedure, one has to ensure the highest possible reliability. Consequently landslide susceptibility maps should only be used if they are based on real la...
To avoid damage on infrastructure and loss of life, rockfall hazard zonation based on numerical s... more To avoid damage on infrastructure and loss of life, rockfall hazard zonation based on numerical simulation, has become an important tool for land use planning. Due to process-complexity and scale-dependency of input data, rockfall runout modelling is still subject to many uncertainties. Based on the specific geologic conditions (e.g. lithology, fabric, discontinuities, tectonics), detached block sizes at the cliff face vary significantly. Furthermore, released rock masses tend to disintegrate into fragments after the first impact. Depending on size and shape of the detached block and boulder/surface interaction, modelling trajectories of these fragments is a difficult task. A few sophisticated simulation tools are able to consider rebound-effects as well as macro-, and micro-topographic factors controlling lateral dispersion. However, these models require a set of high-precision terrain and vegetation roughness parameters – which are typically not available for large areas. We propo...
<p&amp... more <p>During 22-24 June 2009, Austria witnessed a rampant rainfall spell that spread across populated areas of the country. High-intensity rainfall caused 3000+ landslides in Feldbach, and property damages worth €10,000,000 in Styria itself. Numerous synoptic-scale studies indicated the presence of a cut-off low over the Adriatic and excessive moisture convergence behind the extreme event. In a warmer climate change scenario, such an extreme precipitation event may become more intense due to higher water holding capacity of air with increased temperatures, but this reasoning may not be so straightforward considering the complex physics of precipitation.</p> <p>Precipitation, as a natural atmospheric phenomenon, is dependent upon the dynamic and thermodynamic characteristics of the atmosphere. While it is safe to say that the thermodynamic characteristics of the atmosphere are relatively easier to simulate with confidence using available global models, the same cannot be said about the dynamics. This can be blamed on the chaotic non-linear behaviour of the atmosphere and problem in resolving sub-grid scale processes that reduce the model accuracy for longer spatial scales.</p> <p>CCLM regional model is used to study this extreme precipitation event. Our setup uses IFS data to calculate initial and boundary conditions for the simulations of the ‘present’ case where our attempt is to recreate the event over the same location as the original event. Further we use CMIP5 global climate models (at the RCP8.5) scenario. In particular, these will be applied in the ‘surrogate climate change’ method. Here, the climate change signals are calculated by computing the difference between the thermodynamic fields of the CMIP5 simulations for the future and the past. These climate change signals are applied to the original fields to obtain the ‘changed’ fields which are used to calculate new initial and boundary conditions resembling a climate-change future. A similar approach is to be applied for the ‘past’ case simulations.</p> <p>The idea behind this experimental setup is to establish a ‘storyline’ for the event as it would have occurred in the past, present and the future. The storyline approach provides an alternative to the traditional probabilistic approach for assessing risk enhancement and can serve to study responses of different mechanisms to climate change. The storyline approach also helps in decision-making as event-oriented risk management is easy for people to perceive and respond to. An associated landslide modelling study, which uses the precipitation output of our simulations as input, looks into the probable increased risks of landslides in the region and will directly aid the lives of those living in Southeast Austria.</p>
Within the frame of the ongoing project MoNOE (Development of Methods for Modelling Natural Hazar... more Within the frame of the ongoing project MoNOE (Development of Methods for Modelling Natural Hazards in the Province of Lower Austria) the generation of an indicative multi-hazard map to be used as a scientific reference for regional policies of land use management is one of the main objectives. The applicability and reliability of two relatively simple GIS-based approaches have been analysed aiming at the identification of areas which are potentially endangered by rockfall in a fast and cost-effective manner.
2007 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2007
... The use of a 'pseudo-stereo' QUICKBIRD imag... more ... The use of a 'pseudo-stereo' QUICKBIRD image pair, generated from the mono ... Map, Geocoding [5], Pansharpening [4], Topographic Normalisation [3], Derivation of Morphometric Terrain Parameters ... Finally, the results of the landslide hazard map are integrated into the ...
Landslide susceptibility modelling and implementation of the resulting maps is still a challenge ... more Landslide susceptibility modelling and implementation of the resulting maps is still a challenge for geoscientists, spatial and infrastructure planners. Particularly on a regional scale landslide processes and their dynamics are poorly understood. Furthermore, the availability of appropriate spatial data in high resolution is often a limiting factor for modelling high quality landslide susceptibility maps for large study areas. However, these maps form an important basis for preventive spatial planning measures. Thus, new methods have to be developed, especially focussing on the implementation of final maps into spatial planning processes. The main objective of the project "MoNOE" (Method development for landslide susceptibility modelling in Lower Austria) is to design a method for landslide susceptibility modelling for a large study area (about 10.200 km²) and to produce landslide susceptibility maps which are finally implemented in the spatial planning strategies of the Federal state of Lower Austria. The project focuses primarily on the landslide types fall and slide. To enable susceptibility modelling, landslide inventories for the respective landslide types must be compiled and relevant data has to be gathered, prepared and homogenized. Based on this data new methods must be developed to tackle the needs of the spatial planning strategies. Considerable efforts will also be spent on the validation of the resulting maps for each landslide type. A great challenge will be the combination of the susceptibility maps for slides and falls in just one single susceptibility map (which is requested by the government) and the definition of the final visualisation. Since numerous landslides have been favoured or even triggered by human impact, the human influence on landslides will also have to be investigated. Furthermore possibilities to integrate respective findings in regional susceptibility modelling will be explored. According to these objectives the project is structured in four work packages namely data preparation and homogenization (WP1), susceptibility modelling and validation (WP2), integrative susceptibility assessment (WP3) and human impact (WP4). The expected results are a landslide inventory map covering all endangered parts of the Federal state of Lower Austria, a land cover map of Lower Austria with high spatial resolution, processed spatial input data and an optimized integrative susceptibility map visualized at a scale of 1:25.000. The structure of the research project, research strategies as well as first results will be presented at the conference. The project is funded by the Federal state government of Lower Austria.
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Papers by Herwig Proske