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Research project (§ 26 & § 27)
Duration : 2025-04-01 - 2026-03-31

The municipality of Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge is currently developing a comprehensive climate strategy to achieve climate neutrality, increase sustainability and pursue the goal of increasing climate resilience. This is being accelerated by improving the microclimate with the help of blue-green infrastructure in public spaces and shady green spaces and footpaths. The establishment of a new rain management system to mitigate heavy rainfall events and promote unsealing is also a declared goal of the municipality. The renaturalisation of municipal water bodies is recognised as a contribution to flood protection. Finally, the opening/reactivation of the currently piped and underground Mühlbach stream is discussed as a key measure in connection with the aforementioned points. The most important cornerstones of the exploratory project for the demonstration of a climate-neutral neighbourhood are Climate protection by avoiding greenhouse gas emissions through the use of local environmental energy to decarbonise the operation of municipal buildings Climate resilience through the development of additional alternative water sources and more efficient use of existing resources Climate change adaptation through the creation of climate-friendly public open spaces with the help of blue-green infrastructures
Research project (§ 26 & § 27)
Duration : 2024-11-01 - 2027-04-30

The proposed project goal is to extend the development of the ET estimation service, which was already done in the ASAP project, VASE3 and Hedwig project4. In the VASE project freely available Copernicus Sentinel and other geoinformation data was used to create an evapotranspiration map for Vienna and the surrounding area, which provides information about open green spaces that exhibit particularly good evapotranspiration. The idea of the proposed service is to develop a methodology for estimating ET at the scale of 10 meters, by using an innovative machine learning data fusion to combine the data from the Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission at 10m, with NASA ECOSTRESS mission at 70 m, resulting in a complete ET map over Austria. Sentinel-2 capabilities will be used as input and NASA ECOSTRESS mission as reference. The deep learning model will have as objective to retrieve the relationship between thermal infrared (TIR) and normalized vegetation index (NDVI) and by using additional variables estimating ET. The validation will be done by the partner project by setting up ET experiments in climate chambers and measuring ET of different plant communities throughout the year in different weather conditions to ensure the accuracy of the final product. They will also help in engaging decision-makers across the entire value chain, conducting extensive public outreach efforts, and considering the requirements of target audiences and potential stakeholders.
Research project (§ 26 & § 27)
Duration : 2025-02-15 - 2031-02-14

Dam structures and their ecosystem services are exposed to the effects of climate change. Drought and dryness are often the dominant factors during low water phases. Large embankment slopes result in unfavourable radiation angles depending on the exposure. It can be assumed that heat and the associated drought effects will have an increased impact on the embankment areas. On the other hand, there is a predicted increase in heavy rainfall events, which on the one hand will affect embankment vegetation weakened by drought stress and may lead to erosion processes caused by precipitation falling directly on the embankment surface. On the other hand, the increase in heavy rainfall events may also lead to an increase in the frequency of flood events and the associated loads on the dam structures. The present project plan aims to continue the research work of the past 16 years and to expand it to include aspects of biodiversity and microclimate in order to generate a more holistic understanding of the process.

Supervised Theses and Dissertations