Avalanche risk assessment for mountain roads- a comparison of case studies from Iceland and the Alps

• Main Authors: M. Wastl, J. Stötter
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Iceland
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.661.3117; http://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2009/EGU2009-6191-1.pdf?origin%3Dpublication_detail

While the management of alpine natural hazards in settlements follows highly developed operational standardised procedures in many countries, there are very few approaches for a systematic survey and assessment of these natural hazard processes and the related risks and for a sustainable planning of measures for roads. This is even more surprising against the background of the ongoing increase of traffic in Europe and its economic importance. This contribution compares the results of a regional scale assessment of the avalanche risk on mountain roads for case studies from Austria, Italy and Iceland. It provides the first assessment of the natural hazard situation for roads outside closed settlements in Iceland and discusses the applicability of regional scale risk based approaches developed in the Alps to the specific natural, economic and social situation. It also compares the role of risk in the assessment and management of natural hazards in these countries. The assessment of the risk by natural hazard processes for roads follows approaches developed by Wil-helm (1997, 1998, 1999) and Borter (1999a, 1999b) in the Alps adapted to comply with the data availability of the regional scale. These approaches distinguish between the individual risk on the one hand and the collective risk for the society on the other hand for each process area as well as the cumulative risk for the investigated road section. As the spatial and temporal distribution of avalanches is relatively well documented in some of the Alpine