Regional Mountain Conference

Wildfires are an increasingly relevant hazard in Austrian mountain regions, particularly within the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI), where settlements, tourism infrastructure, commercial activities, and forested landscapes intersect. While climate change influences fire regimes, rising wildfire risk in alpine areas is also strongly shaped by evolving exposure patterns and differentiated vulnerability of buildings and economic assets. Expanding tourism facilities, dispersed residential development, and infrastructure growth in hazard-prone terrain significantly alter local risk configurations.

This contribution presents a comprehensive and transferable assessment tool for analysing wildfire vulnerability across diverse building types in the Austrian mountain context. Moving beyond conventional building classifications, the tool integrates:

• Structural characteristics (e.g., construction materials, roofs, façade elements, openings),
• Functional dimensions (e.g., production processes, storage of combustible materials, visitor density, critical services), and
• Environmental context (e.g., surrounding vegetation, ground cover, slope conditions, adjacent infrastructure).

Importantly, the approach differentiates between crown fires, surface fires, and spotting processes, allowing a more process-oriented understanding of fire-structure interactions in alpine terrain. By linking hazard characteristics with building-specific vulnerability factors, the tool provides an empirically grounded framework that supports spatial comparison and hotspot identification at local and municipal scales.

We demonstrate how land-use development, tourism expansion, and socio-economic change in mountain municipalities modify risk patterns independently of, and in interaction with, changing climatic conditions. Beyond methodological development, the project translates scientific assessment into practice through a handbook designed for municipalities and local stakeholders. The guidance supports indicator selection, data collection, interpretation, and integration into spatial planning, risk management, and prevention strategies. By strengthening the empirical basis of vulnerability assessment and improving documentation of exposure patterns, the approach contributes to more robust risk modelling and forward-looking wildfire management in mountain regions.