Feeling hot is being hot? Comparing the mapping and the surveying paradigm for urban heat vulnerability in Vienna.

With rising global temperatures, cities increasingly need to identify populations or areas that are vulnerable to urban heat waves; however, vulnerability assessments may run into ecological fallacy if data from different scales are misconstrued as equivalent. We assess the heat vulnerability of 1983 residents in Vienna by measuring heat impacts, exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity with mirrored indicators in the mapping paradigm (i.e.

Nature visits, but not residential greenness, are associated with reduced income-related inequalities in subjective well-being.

Nature exposure can promote human health and well-being. Additionally, there is some, albeit mixed, evidence that this relationship is stronger for socio-economically disadvantaged groups (equigenesis). Using a cross-sectional survey of the Austrian population (N = 2300), we explored the relationships between both residential greenness and recreational nature visits, and affective (WHO-5 Well-Being Index) and evaluative (Personal Well-Being Index-7) subjective well-being.

Past and future impacts of land-use changes on ecosystem services in Austria.

Environmental and socio-economic developments induce land-use changes with potentially negative impacts on human well-being. To counteract undesired developments, a profound understanding of the complex relationships between drivers, land use, and ecosystem services is needed. Yet, national studies examining extended time periods are still rare.

How path dependency manifests in flood risk management: observations from four decades in the Ennstal and Aist catchments in Austria.

Path dependency occurs when a contingent event predetermines what further steps can be taken and self-reinforcing mechanisms lock-in any further development on a sub-optimal trajectory. Path dependency is a prominent concept in the adaptation pathways literature, but insufficiently defined and operationalised. The present paper empirically tracks all constitutive elements of path dependency for four decades of flood risk management (FRM) in two alpine mountain regions in Austria, the Ennstal and Aist river catchments, using a mixed-methods approach.

Risk perception of climate change and natural hazards in global mountain regions: A critical review.

Mountains are highly sensitive to climate change. Their elevated areas provide essential ecosystem services both for the surrounding mountainous regions and particularly for adjacent lowlands. Impacts of a warmer climate affect these services and have negative consequences on the supply of water, on biodiversity and on protection from natural hazards.

The influence of climate change and canopy disturbances on landslide susceptibility in headwater catchments.

Forests have an important regulating function on water runoff and the occurrence of shallow landslides. Their structure and composition directly influence the risk of hydrogeomorphic processes, like floods with high sediment transport or debris flows. Climate change is substantially altering forest ecosystems, and for Central Europe an increase in natural disturbances from wind and insect outbreaks is expected for the future.

Risk communication and adaptive behaviour in flood-prone areas of Austria: A Q-methodology study on opinions of affected homeowners.

Adaptive behaviour has become a crucial aspect in current flood risk management strategies across the globe, especially in response to potential consequences of flood hazards and facing challenges of climate change. There are several factors which influence the motivation to implement flood risk management strategies such as property-level flood risk adaptation (PLFRA) measures. This paper assesses and evaluates the role of risk communication, which is a vital and overarching driver or barrier in the successful implementation of PLFRA measures.

The impact of humanitarian assistance on post-disaster social vulnerabilities: some early reflections on the Nepal earthquake in 2015.

Every year, thousands of people around the world who face unequal access to political and social power and resources lose their lives and/or livelihoods in natural hazard events. As a result, the reduction of vulnerability has become a central concern of humanitarian actors. This paper analyses the impact of humanitarian assistance on vulnerabilities in Nepal following the Gorkha earthquake on 25 April 2015.

Bottom-up citizen initiatives as emergent actors in flood risk management: Mapping roles, relations and limitations.

The recent shift to individualisation of flood risk calls for a stronger involvement of private actors. Bottom-up citizen initiatives (BUIs) may bring together governmental bodies with people at risk. Drawing on a screening of existing BUIs in Europe, North America, and Australia and an in-depth analysis of three study sites, this paper maps BUI activities to stages in the risk management cycle and discusses the institutional, relational and social proximity between BUIs and other stakeholders.

Drivers and barriers of adaptation initiatives - How societal transformation affects natural hazard management and risk mitigation in Europe.

A key challenge of hazard risk management is finding novel ways to respond to future extremes amid increasing vulnerability. Societal transformation in the context of multi-functional protection schemes offers potential in this regard. However, the drivers and barriers of societal transformation in hazard management are poorly understood.

Natural Hazard Management from a Coevolutionary Perspective: Exposure and Policy Response in the European Alps.

A coevolutionary perspective is adopted to understand the dynamics of exposure to mountain hazards in the European Alps. A spatially explicit, object-based temporal assessment of elements at risk to mountain hazards (river floods, torrential floods, and debris flows) in Austria and Switzerland is presented for the period from 1919 to 2012. The assessment is based on two different data sets: (1) hazard information adhering to legally binding land use planning restrictions and (2) information on building types combined from different national-level spatial data.

The frequency of electrocardiographic errors due to electrode cable switches: a before and after study.

Introduction: Electrocardiographic (ECG) errors due to electrode cable reversal confuse physicians and provoke unnecessary diagnostic tests. They occur in approximately 4% of ECGs performed in the intensive care unit (ICU). We aimed to investigate whether this frequency could be reduced by an appropriate intervention.