Major research efforts have been devoted to studying the impacts of climate change on snow conditions in ski areas, including snow making as a technical adaptation strategy in recent years. However, little attention has been paid to quantifying past demand changes owing to shortterm climate variability. This paper examines the impacts of snow conditions on tourism demand in 185 Austrian ski areas in the period 1972/1973 to 2006/2007. For the majority of areas, a positive relationship is found between overnight stays and snow conditions; however, overnight stays in higherlying areas typically show no dependency on snow conditions. Instead, some of them negatively depend on average Austrian snow conditions. Overall, a 1 standard deviation change in snow conditions led to a change in overnight stays of 0.6 to 1.9%, with estimates from the most reliable panel data models of 0.6 and 1.1%. Impacts were significantly higher for particular regions and for extreme seasons. However, temporal analysis reveals that impacts have decreased in recent years, probably owing to the major increase in snowmaking.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract. To date, in Austria no empirical assessment of absolute damage curves has been realized on the basis of detailed information on flooded buildings due to a dam breach, presumably because of the lack of data. This paper tries to fill this gap by estimating an absolute flood-damage curve, based on data of a recent flood event in Austria in 2006. First, a concise analysis of the case study area is conducted, i.e., the maximum damage potential is identified by using rasterbased GIS. Thereafter, previous literature findings on existing flood-damage functions are considered in order to determine a volume-water damage function that can be used for further flood damage assessment. Finally, the flood damage function is cross validated and applied in prediction of damage potential in the study area. For future development of the estimated flood damage curve, and to aid more general use, we propose verification against field data on damage caused by natural waves in rivers.

No abstract

No abstract