The Safety and Disaster Studies working group at Montanuniversität Leoben, in collaboration with partners GeoSphere Austria (overall project management), the German Weather Service, and the Avalanche Warning Centre at the Bavarian Environmental Agency, are developing a concept to optimize cross-border and interdisciplinary climate services, known as climate services, as part of the EU-funded project “RiskLIM: Understandable Predictions in the Context of Climate Change.” This includes risk impact and hazard assessments related to avalanches and snow loads.
The topics of risk communication and climate change adaptation are being addressed by the SDS working group from a social science perspective. Therefore, a newly created PhD position is establishing a solid scientific foundation for participatory risk approaches, using qualitative methods (e.g., focus groups) after extensive literature research and employing mixed methods approaches (e.g., quantifiable content analysis, clustering). The aim is to identify key success and risk factors for climate adaptation, crisis and risk communication, and to close the research gap precisely at the interface between natural hazards (short-term) and climate adaptation communication (medium/long-term).
Contact persons: Project leader: Renate Renner; Research assistant and PhD student: Julia Graf