Disaster Reduction
Background
Extreme natural hazards with immense destructive power can become a catastrophe for humans if they hit settlements and infrastructure. Not only the construction of buildings and infrastructure in high-risk areas increases with rising numbers of population and technological progress – The possibility of threatening damage increases too. Protective constructions only work up to a certain dimension of an incident. Thus, affected people must be informed timely through technically demanding early warning systems.
Challenges
Protective constructions are designed so they work up to a certain measurement value. If this value is exceeded, dams will be flooded. Also a rather unlikely but possible failure of a building must be considered when looking at the residual risk. In the course of the last 20 years, valuable new findings and data about hazard processes could be gathered. These findings and data, however, must reach local authorities, firefighters and rescue teams so they can contribute to disaster prevention.
Competence
Until 2006, designing disaster control plans was none of the duties of engineers. In Lower Austria, we set a standard in this working field and were nominated for the National Award for Engineering Consulting. Disaster control plans by RIOCOM serve as preparative for disaster scenarios countrywide. Local emergency personnel and authorities’ representatives are experts to us. The combination of their experiences and our technical know-how provides the best protection possible.
