Case study report: Alpine Hazards in South Tyrol (Italy) and Grison (Switzerland)

The report examines community resilience in two Alpine regions. In South Tyrol, it analyzes the impact of a December 2012 landslide in Badia, finding that while risk awareness is high, it does not always lead to individual preparedness. The study highlights the critical role of local social networks and the high trust placed in local authorities like the fire brigade and municipality. In Grisons, the report focuses on the methodology for creating quantitative resilience indicators, such as residence time and past disaster awareness, to help decision-makers prioritize preventive actions.

• In Badia, South Tyrol, there is a significant gap between general risk awareness and active preparedness; while 73.9% of respondents know the area is prone to landslides and mudflows, 50% found the possibility of such an event happening to be 'unimaginable'.
• The 2012 landslide in Badia increased the perceived probability of future impacts, particularly for those directly affected (mean probability 3.4 vs 2.74 for those not affected) and those living in close geographical proximity (4.33 on a five-point scale).
• Traditional and local knowledge remains a primary source of hazard information across all age groups in Badia, with family and village members being as important as media for information immediately after an event.
• Public satisfaction with disaster response in Badia tends to decrease over time; while coordination of action forces saw high initial satisfaction, there was a general trend of decrease in satisfaction 16 months after the event, particularly regarding recovery and reconstruction information.
• The volunteer fire brigade and the municipality of Badia are the most critical institutional actors for the community, with the fire brigade cited as the first contact in 40% of responses.
• The organizational response network in South Tyrol is considered resilient due to regular emergency exercises, rapid activation times (within a few hours), and high levels of personal trust and familiarity among members.
• In Grisons, Switzerland, residence time in a valley is a measurable indicator of resilience, with prevention knowledge increasing up to 40 years of residence, following a logarithmic curve.
• The Grisons study proposes a quantitative indicator for risk perception based on past disasters, incorporating three factors: time since the event (with a suggested half-value memory period of 14 years), number of casualties (capped at 10 deaths), and spatial distance (threshold of 50 km).
• Subscription to natural hazard warning services (e.g., MeteoSwiss) is used as a binary resilience indicator in Grisons, where a value of 1.0 is assigned to households subscribed to at least one service.

APA

Pedoth, L., Jülich, S., Taylor, R., Kofler, C., Matin, N., Forrester, J., & Schneiderbauer, S. (2015). Case study report: Alpine Hazards in South Tyrol (Italy) and Grison (Switzerland). Stockholm Environment Institute. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/emBRACE-Alpine-hazards-South-Tyrol-Grison.pdf

Chicago

Pedoth, Lydia, Sebastian Jülich, Richard Taylor, Christian Kofler, Nilufar Matin, John Forrester, and Stefan Schneiderbauer. Case study report: Alpine Hazards in South Tyrol (Italy) and Grison (Switzerland). Stockholm Environment Institute, 2015. https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/emBRACE-Alpine-hazards-South-Tyrol-Grison.pdf.

Wikipedia

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BibTeX

@techreport{pedoth2015case, author = {Pedoth, Lydia and Jülich, Sebastian and Taylor, Richard and Kofler, Christian and Matin, Nilufar and Forrester, John and Schneiderbauer, Stefan}, title = {{Case study report: Alpine Hazards in South Tyrol (Italy) and Grison (Switzerland)}}, institution = {Stockholm Environment Institute}, year = {2015}, month = mar, url = {https://www.sei.org/mediamanager/documents/Publications/Climate/emBRACE-Alpine-hazards-South-Tyrol-Grison.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }