https://coin2.ccca.ac.at/

The consequences of climate change are already being felt strongly in Austria today in the form of changing temperature and precipitation patterns and an increase in severe weather events. This is already resulting in considerable costs for the public sector, which will increase as climate change progresses (Bachner and Bednar-Friedl 2018; Bachner et al. 2019; Köppl and Schratzenstaller 2024).

2nd Austrian Assessement Report, AAR2

These include expenditure on climate damage remediation and climate change adaptation measures and affect all federal levels (federal, state and local), parafiscal charges (especially health and accident insurance) and other public sector institutions. The consequences of climate change affect all areas of the economy and society, but to varying degrees and through different channels.

For Austria, the first consistent quantification of future climate impact costs across impact areas was carried out in the first study (Steininger et al. 2015). On the one hand, this study showed that the potential annual impact costs for Austria could exceed €5 billion by the middle of the century. On the other hand, the large number of identified but unquantified impact chains creates uncertainty, which can be reduced by follow-up studies.

COIN Studie

Since then, approaches and models have been further developed for Austria in all areas of impact, resulting in more comprehensive quantifications of climate impact costs and various adaptation measures based on a more reliable and detailed database. However, these areas of impact have not yet been consistently consolidated. In terms of methodology, there has also been relevant progress in recent years in the areas of distributional effects, scenario narratives and synthesised knowledge. Further exploration of these areas is therefore proving to be a policy-relevant research question for COIN 2.0.

The IGF was commissioned to analyse the effects and damage caused by torrents and alpine natural hazards.