Tipping Points in Natural Hazard Risk Management: How Societal Transformation can Provoke Policy Strategies in Mitigation

Abstract

In this paper, we show how the concept of tipping points can be interpreted by using the example of natural hazard management. Until now, despite the increasing amount of papers on tipping points in the assessment of geomorphologic hazards and the associated dynamics of research on climate change, there has been little empirical or theoretical engagement with tipping points in risk management and in the adaptive capacity of individual actors or social systems. By bridging this gap, we focus on adaptation initiatives to mountain hazard management and on the question of how these initiatives were triggered using three different study sites in Austria. Necessary system changes root in different nutshells, such as lack of funding, lack of legal incentives to include local interests or lack of space, where classical structural protection schemes cannot respond to the emerging challenges of system dynamics. This paper used a mixed-method approach, including semi-structured in-depth interviews, scenario constructions and policy analysis to assess the potential tipping points in the implementation of innovative systems to manage mountain hazards. The results showed that vital variables influencing the development of new management measures are (1) the current legislation, (2) risk acceptance among authorities and the public, (3) land-use pressure, (4) the demand for innovative solutions, (5) the available technical standards and possibilities and (6) finally the policy entrepreneurship. Concluding the results, contemporary settings concerning risk management strategies will have to change in the future in order to inspire transformative governance arrangements in natural hazard management.