Ris­KLIM

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