Land Use in Flood-Prone Areas and Its Significance for Flood Risk Management—A Case Study of Alpine Regions in Austria

Increasing flood damage has led to a rising importance of land use in flood risk management policies, commonly referred to as the spatial turn in flood risk management. This includes policies aiming at making space for rivers, which, in practice, lead to an increasing demand for land. Although research has been conducted on the variety of policies, the resulting land use conflicts in flood-prone areas have not been paid much attention to. This paper therefore analyses the current land use and its changes in Alpine flood-prone areas in Austria. The results show that space for rivers has been decreasing due to human activities (e.g., river straightening and channel narrowing) since the middle of the 19th century, and settlements have been expanding into flood-prone areas. Furthermore, the share of valuable agricultural land (which is important for food production) located in flood hazard zones is higher in more mountainous areas. Given the limited space for permanent settlement in Alpine regions, these land use changes exert pressure on the availability of land suitable for flood risk management. Therefore, making space for rivers as part of flood risk management policies faces considerable restrictions in Alpine areas.