EU Exchange of Experts Risk Assessments

Field report: EU Exchange of Experts between
Austria and Sweden – Tyrol Risk Assessment
Participating Organisations and Expertsitution* Email
Participating Experts from Sweden
Ms. Ulrika Postgard (MSB)
Mr. Omar Harrami (MSB)
Mr. Magnus Winehav (MSB)
Ms. Erica Storckenfeldt (County Administrative Board in Jönköping)
Mr. Fredric Jonsson (Jönköping Municipality)
Mr. Jan-Eric Bengtsson (Jönköping Municipality)
Mr. Eric Blomdahl (Jönköping Municipality)
Participating Experts from Austria
Mr. Marcel Innerkofler (Land Tirol)
Ms. Bettina Wengler (Land Tirol)
Mr. Herbert Walter (Land Tirol)
Ms. Michiko Hama (alpS)
Mr. Stefan Ortner (alpS)
Mr. Andreas Koler (alpS)
Mr. Christian Zangerl( alpS)
Mr. Martin Presslaber (City of Lienz)
Mr. Oskar Januschke (City of Lienz)
Programme Summary
Day 1: 28.01.2013 National and Provincial Risk Assessment
Visit at Provincial Emergency Warning Centre
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Welcome and introduction of all participants
Disaster management
Visit to the Provincial Emergency Warning Centre
Provincial Emergency Dispatch Centre
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Emergency Management Dispatch System – the Tyrolean approach
Visit to the Provincial Emergency Dispatch Centre
Transfer, lunch and visit at alpS
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alpS – Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Technologies
The “Eibelschrofen Rockfall” – an introduction
Excursion to the “Eiblschrofen Rockfall”
Transfer to Lienz and Check-In
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Dinner (hosted by EU – THW)
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Day 2: 29.01.2013 Municipality Risk Assessment
Visit to the City of Lienz
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The City of Lienz from a non-risk perspective
Area wide Risk Assessment in all Tyrolean Municipalities
The Basic – Approach (applied in 279 municipalities)
ORTIS Software tool and GIS
Risk Management in the City of Lienz
Discussion
Lunch hosted by the Fire Brigade of Lienz
Natural Hazard risk reduction in the District of Lienz
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The Isel Flooding: Analysis and measures taken
Site visit: Isel Flooding, excursion outside the City of Lienz
Visit to the District Emergency Dispatch Centre and at the Fire Department of the City of Lienz
Dinner, hosted by the Tyrolean Government
Day 3: 30.01.2013 Other Aspects of Risk Assessment in the Tyrol
Transfer to “Dolomitenhütte”
 The role of Volunteers in the Civil Protection System in the Tyrol
 Cooperation between Science/Public Authorities/United Nations
Lunch hosted by alpS
Field Exercise organised by the Mountain Rescue service Lienz
Final Discussion
 Conclusions
 Options for future collaboration
Transfer to Lienz by rodel
Dinner hosted by the City of Lienz
Day 4: 31.01.2013 Transfer to Innsbruck
Transfer to Innsbruck
End of official programme
Departure from Innsbruck
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Day 1 - 28/1 - 2013
Welcome and introduction - Herbert Walter and Bettina Wengler
All participants assembled at the Provincial Government Hall and were met
by a warm welcome and short introduction to Tirol by Herbert Walter.
Bettina Wengler then presented the legal framework for DRR in Austria and
in Tirol, giving a
background to the
Austrian federal
system as a foundation for the regional
DRR.
There are nine districts in Tirol and 279
communities. The area of Tirol is 12640
km2 and the settlement area is only 1503
km2. The population is 714449 and most
of them live in the valleys.
The Civil and Disaster Protection
Department is responsible for:
 Civil and disaster protection
 Regional Alarm and Warning
Centre, avalanche warning service
 Digital alarm system and digital radio system
 Fire services
 Rescue ambulance and helicopter services
 Substitute service for the military service
(“Zivildienst”)
There are different authorities responsible for preventing
and managing disasters and different laws regulating these
matters.
The authorities responsible for disaster preparation and management are:
 Local disasters – the local Mayor
 District disasters – the District Authority
 Regional disasters – the Regional Government
This presentation set off the first discussion on responsibilities and cooperation between
different geographical authority levels and organisations within the Tirol DRR system, and
comparisons to the Swedish system.
Provincial Emergency Warning Centre - Leitestelle Tirol
At the Tirol Provincial Warning Centre Marcel Innerkofler presented different tasks of the
Centre:
 Advicing and analysing disasters engaging the Dispatch Centre
 Information centre for the operational controller of the federal state
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Informing and alerting members of government, departments and other experts
Set tasks for different authorities of the Tyrolean government out of office hours
Monitoring different alarm systems: nuclear, flood warning, server alerting
Warning and alerting
Request for assistance of Austrian army
Operations and crisis coordination
Exercises for the different organisations of the civil protection system
Training, advice and assistance to the districts and communities
The presentation evolved into a discussion of common and different challenges, which also
brought up previous projects in both countries, which the other country respectively may be
interested in for its own further work. One of the issues brought up was the handling of critical
infrastructure.
The presentation was followed by a guided tour through the Warning Centre, for a deeper
understanding of its function and technical operational possibilities.
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Provincial Emergency Dispatch Centre
Thomas Mayr and Martin
Eberharter presented the
tasks of the Provincial
Emergency Dispatch Centre.
The Centre gives emergency
assistance 24 hours a day,
seven days a week. The centre
is financed by the Federal
State of Tirol.
During every emergency call
different entry questions are
asked in order to:
 Assigning the location
 Evaluate signs of
possible risks
The answers to the entry and key
questions generates a dispatch code and
the information is sent to the dispatcher,
who alarms and supports the emergency
teams. The centre also gives life support
guidance until the emergency teams
arrive.
The centre have different tasks:
Task 1 – Emergency service, fire
departments and HEMS
Task 2 - Mountain rescue service, Water
rescue service, Cave rescue service, Mine
rescue service.
Task 3 – Tunnel surveillance and other tasks
They also demonstrated their CAD system and how
the status for each mission is shown on the screen and
on a digital map. The system also suggests witch unit
shall be sent to the emergency scene.
The detailed presentation gave a deeper understanding
of the more detailed operative functions, and thereby
also the possibilities and possible weaknesses of the
Tirol system.
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Introduction to Alp S
Michiko Hama gave an overview of AlpS, which is a research, development and consultancy
centre focusing on:
 Natural hazards research and risk management
 Climate Change and Adaptation
 Sustainability in mountain regions
They work together with:
 Public authorities
 Scientific or research institutions, eg. universities
 Private companies
Michiko also mentioned different project that the centre
is involved in, for example:
 H03 MUSICALS – Multi-scale snow and ice melt discharge
 C06 Klim Tour – Climate change as opportunity for Tourism in the alps
 H01 Hydrox – Flood modelling
 ENVELOP – part 2 of an Facade element development project, which can improve
constructions of buildings
The risk support services AlpS offer are for example:
 Climate sensitive risk mapping
 Multi risk assessments
 Climate change impact on critical infrastructure
 Support to Health Facilities
 Capacity building for DRR and climate change adaptation
 ORTIS – software for risk management
 Energy planning
 Mitigation and adaptation
Introduction to Rockfall Risks in Tirol and three Examples, including
Eiblschrofen Rockfall
Christian Zangerl and Christoph Prager from AlpS gave an overview of land slide projects and
selected case studies. AlpS do for example:
 Multi-disciplinary analysis of processes for and monitoring of unstable slopes
 Process analysis and forecasting of landslides
 Geological, geotechnical and hydrogeological field surveys
 Studies on creeping slopes
Current research topics are the prognosis possibilities, risk
assessments and mitigation possibilities associated with the risks of
rock falls.
Case study Hochmais Atemkopf rockslide
The rock fall area I situated just above a large water reservoir and a rockslide may result in major
consequences. Hence, different monitoring systems are set up to study changes, eg. a tunnel
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provided with levelling instruments, a wire extensometer and a water level gauge. They also have
developed a rockslide model of the geometry and kinematics to understand the processes
involved. Since 1980 there is a change in deformation. At the moment there is a linear trend
with small fluctuations changing with the water level.
Case study Eiblschrofen
This is a densely populated and political sensitive area. During 1999 the rock slide risk acutely
increased and they had to evacuate 260 people and 58 houses. Historically they only had minor
rock falls. But 1993 there was a subsurface collapse in a silver mine. Extensive field surveys are
done to monitor and develop process models and risk analyses. Mitigation measures provided
are for example rock fall protection nets and retention dams.
Case study Lisach (Lienz)
In this area a failure occurred that impacted a road and the river. Approx. 800 000m3 slid down.
Luckily the failure occurred during the night otherwise there could have been larger
consequences. Several failures have occurred in the area previously. The trigger mechanisms are
still unknown, but there is a fluvial erosion and long term slope creeping in the area. Another
reason could be increasing pore water as a consequence of the snow-rich winter 2008/2009.
The presentation set of a discussion mainly concerning the actual rock fall risks, but also the
challenges of public communication of such risks, where especially the handling of the acute risk
at Eiblschrofen served as an ambitious and successful example.
Field Trip: Eiblschrofen Rockfall
At the rock fall site the stability problems and prevention measures were explained further and
discussed. The scale of the rockfall risk was increasingly present when standing at the catchment
wall in the shadow of several 100 metres of partly vertical rocks.
Transfer to Lienz
The group then transferred (under ongoing discussions) to Lienz, through the breath taking
landscape in fog and dusk, finally reaching the wonderfully situated hotel and a longed for
dinner and finally meeting up with the last and local Expert.
Day 2 - 29/1 - 2013
The City of Lienz
The Mayor of Lienz opened day two with a short and warm welcome to Lienz and then Oskar
Januschke presented the city of Lienz and the communal risk and management process for Lienz.
Their risk analysis identified 79 potential threats and 29 of them are natural related hazards.
Examples of risks and previous events are:
 Major floods, mud flows and heavy rainfall causing disruption of infrastructure
 Searching for people in the town centre after heavy snowfall 2008
 Protection from avalanches from roofs
 Major landslides and rock falls
 Large retail fires
 Industrial fires
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Spread of nuclear cloud after Chernobyl
Hotel fires at high altitude with only one access road.
Forest fires
Storms
Evacuation of people from chairlifts and gondolas
Avalanches
Unexploded bomb from world-war II found in the city centre
Black-outs
Lienz integrates civil and disaster protection and combine risk and disaster management, crisis
management and civil protection. The operational structure and process during a hazard is 1)
Head of Management Team, 2) Management Teams, 3) Team Operatives and 4) Experts.
Voluntary disaster management teams play an important part in the work.
Area wide Risk Assessment in all Tirol Municipalities
Andreas Koler presented the area wide risk assessment project and methods that has been applied
in the 279 Tirol municipalities. The municipalities range from 60 inhabitants in Gramaish to
130000 inhabitants in Innsbruck. An overview of the risks in Tyrol was also presented.
The main factors and current trends of DRR in Tyrol are:
 More events cannot be handled
by emergency units alone.
 Strong involvement of local
emergency teams
 Tourism has to be considered
due to a huge increase of the
population
 Many risks are related to the
mountains
 Technical risks
 increasingly complex societies
 Climate change will increase the number of natural hazards
 New risks as drought, fresh water supply disruption, wild fires and black outs also have to
be considered.
A strong integration and participation of the
municipalities is important to collect and
document the local knowledge, and also to
give the local authorities a feeling of
ownership of the risk assessment process.
The aim of the work is to enhance the local
capacity - hence the risk assessment work
should prepare the local authority in the
best possible way.
They have held workshops in all the
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municipalities. The workshops have been organized by the Emergency Warning & Emergency
Management Centre and AlpS, but driven by the municipality. The process for the workshop was
also explained.
Pedagogical aspects in working on a local level are:
 Structural differences in the municipalities
 Different persons participating (group dynamics)
 Different starting levels, eg.
different background knowledge
The presentation started a long, detailed
and animated discussion on different risk
assessment methods, risk matrices,
assessment of natural hazards etc.
Despite the differences of legal and
political frameworks, the discussion
evolved around common challenges in
the risk assessment and management.
Several constructive ideas came up
before the group was forced to break for
lunch.
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Natural Hazard risk reduction in the District of Lienz: Insel flooding - a
background and field trip
Harald Haider started by presenting some background figures
about Lienz. The area holds several high mountains, steep
slopes and narrow valleys. In September 1966 a large flooding
occurred. 181 mm of rain fell during 48 hours , 67 buildings
and several bridges were destroyed and 23 people died. The
damage were mainly a result of the debris carried by the water.
There was no method to catch the material, so the debris was
trapped at a dam which resulted in a dam failure and the valley
was flooded. As one measure they have built higher dams.
Next the problems with the river Isel were described. Today they have put several measures in
place to protect the area from flooding. They have built debris catchments and new constructions
in order to be able to take more
water. Large investments have
been made in the area. The
measures taken are dimensioned
to protect against a 100-year flood.
Jan-Eric Bengtsson from
Jönköping also gave a short
presentation of the Gränna
situation and flooding protection
plans.
After the presentation the group
left for the river Insel, to one of the upstream sections which has
been altered to slow the water masses down and prevent floods
and debris from damaging the city of Lienz.
The group then continued on to one of the (normally) smaller
streams, Wartschenbach, which now has been provided with a
(by Swedish standards huge) debris flow catchment dam.
The different measures at the two sites were explained and
discussed on the sites respectively.
District Emergency Dispatch Centre and Fire Department of Lienz
The District Emergency Dispatch Centre was presented as well as its connections and role relative
to the Regional Dispatch Centre. Then the Fire Department, which is operated by volunteers
only, was showed in detail by the Commander and the local Expert Martin Presslaber.
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Day 2 was concluded by a dinner with the Deputy of the District of Lienz, who gave a short
overview of Lienz and also welcomed the Expert Group to the district.
Day 3 - 30/1 - 2013
The Role of Volunteers in the Civil Protection System of Tirol
Day 3 started with a drive up to Dolomitenhütte, a cabin with a marvellous view of the Drautal.
Marcel Innerkofler firstly presented the role of volunteers in the Civil Protection system of Tirol.
The fire fighting federation of Tirol consist of:
 One fire fighting school in Tirol
 One professional fire brigade in Innsbruck
 340 volunteer fire brigades
 21 company fire brigades.
There are about 30000 volunteer fire fighters and about 200 professional fire fighters in Tirol.
There are several different rescue services operating in the Tirol:
 Red Cross, Johanniter, Malteser and ASBÖ (ambulance and medical services)
 Mountain Rescue Services
 Water Rescue Services
 Cave Rescue Services
The rescue service companies are contracted by the Tyrolean government.
Disaster management and preparedness is run by the Red Cross Tirol, which also is contracted
by the Tyrolean government. They are responsible for education, training, exercises and storage
of equipment.
Another resource is the Austrian army. Austria has a military service system, where all men have
to serve either a minimum of 6 months in the army or 9 months of civilian service. The 20th of
January 2013 Austria voted about this system. Just under 50 % of the population voted, with a
majority voting to keep the system, though the
support of the civilian part of the system is
larger than of the military service. After the
referendum the referendum questions have
been questioned, as some say that they should
have had a third alternative with only civil
service as most people are positive to it. The
civilian service plays an important role in the
society and for the authorities.
The presentations evoked a long discussion of the role of volunteers, in general and in the two
countries. It touched upon the increasing problems with finding volunteers, which unfortunately
is shared by both countries, but also the organisation of volunteers where Austria has an
extensive voluntary system in place, whereas Sweden experiences new spontaneous movements
at specific incidents.
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Cooperation between Science/Public Authority and United Nations
Michiko Hama presented how alpS cooperate with scientific research institutions, public
authorities and the United Nations. The overall goal is to enhance the municipal resilience
through Public-Private partnership. The COMET founding program creates synergies between
academia, the private sector and public authorities. Different project examples from COMET
were also presented:
 H05HOPI II, Enhanced preparedness through improved flood forecasting
 H02 INSURE, Insurance Risk Evaluation of Natural Hazards
 G01 MOREEXPERT, Monitoring Expert system for Hazardous Rock Walls
Michiko continued with examples from other funding sources and with their consulting work in
the area of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. She also presented their work
and different events in the “Making Cities resilient” campaign. Another interesting part was the
master thesis on the “Self -Assessment Tool” and we discussed if Sweden could do something
similar and if it then will be possible to compare the results.
Field Exercise with the Mountain Rescue Service
In the afternoon the Mountain Rescue Service in Lienz showed
some practical work. They explained and showed the snow
assessment methods types used for avalanche risk assessments.
They then went on to show different techniques for searching for
people swept away by an avalanche, both the modern search
tools and the more old fashioned ways.
Final Discussions
The exchange was evaluated at the Dolomitenhütte, resulting in very positive judgements of the
exchange. In general the comparison of the different systems and the common problems gave
new insights and ideas.
Later the future cooperation between the two countries, regions and municipalities was discussed,
on a short, medium and long term time frame. The general conclusion was that the exchange
had given all participant valuable new input to their work and it would be a waste not to plan a
continuing cooperation in some way.
The evening was concluded by a dinner hosted by the city of Lienz, where the experts were
joined by Oskar Januschke and parts of the Mountain Rescue team.
Day 4 - 31/1 - 2013
Conclusion and transfer to Innsbruck and Sweden
The experts took farewell of the beautiful City of Lienz, to travel back to Innsbruck. Travelling
back we passed the (still very visible) remains of the major rockfall, at Lisach which was
discussed on Day 1.
When finally returning to Innsbruck the Swedes departed for their planes and trains, bringing
new ideas for continued and improved work, projects and measures preventing natural hazards
and for assessing risks in general home. Hopefully this can fire internal and external discussions
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back home. In addition the visit gave a deeper understanding of the Austrian largely voluntarily based DRR system and the Tirol risks, as an inspiration to take with us to Sweden.
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