WaterStress: A systems perspective on Seewinkel region and its development opportunities

IIASA Researcher Susanne Hanger-Kopp was invited to present results from the WaterStressAT project in Illmitz-Seewinkel, Austria.

Susanne Hanger-Kopp from the Equity and Justice Research Group (EQU) was invited by "Illmitzer Gespraeche" to present the WaterStressAT project, providing the audience with practical tools to evaluate management practices in the Seewinkel region from a systems perspective. This will enable relevant stakeholders to distinguish between short-term risk management activities and long-term resilience building efforts.

The event was attended by a wide range of professionals: mayors, local authority representatives, farmers, winegrowers, teachers, lawyers, real estate managers, and members of civil society. The presentation sparked a vivid conversation between the audience and the speakers, with the goal of building bridges between science and the diverse participants.

The presentation slides (in German)

The WaterStressAT project aims at modeling local and regional water availability and demand in Austria under various regional development and climate change scenarios in two Austrian regions, Pinzgau and Seewinkel. While Austria is a water-rich country, changes in demand as well as climate change create local and regional hot-spots of water stress. It is thus of key importance to understand the current status and future development of these phenomena in order to identify potential areas of tension and inform decision-making at all levels of governance. For this purpose, WaterStressAT established a comprehensive participatory modeling process. This process is designed around regular stakeholder engagement, where key actors regularly interact with an interdisciplinary team of researchers.

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