This paper analyses the influence of climate change and land development on future flood risk for selected Austrian flood-prone municipalities. As part of an anticipatory micro-scale risk assessment we simulated four different inundation scenarios for current and future 100- and 300-year floods (which included a climate change allowance), developed scenarios of future settlement growth in floodplains and evaluated changes in flood damage potentials and flood risk until the year 2030. Findings show that both climate change and settlement development significantly increase future levels of flood risk. However, the respective impacts vary strongly across the different cases. The analysis indicates that local conditions, such as the topography of the floodplain, the spatial allocation of vulnerable land uses or the type of land development (e.g. residential, commercial or industrial) in the floodplain are the key determinants of the respective effects of climate change and land development on future levels of flood risk. The case study analysis highlights the general need for a more comprehensive consideration of the local determinants of flood risk in order to increase the effectiveness of an adaptive management of flood risk dynamics.

The cost effective maintenance of underwater pressure pipes for sewage disposal in Austria requires the detection and localization of leakages. Extrusion of wastewater in lakes can heavily influence the water and bathing quality of surrounding waters. The Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) technology is a widely used technique for oil and gas pipeline leakage detection. While in pipeline leakage detection, fiber optic cables are installed permanently at the outside or within the protective sheathing of the pipe; this paper aims at testing the feasibility of detecting leakages with temporary introduced fiber optic cable inside the pipe. The detection and localization were tested in a laboratory experiment. The intrusion of water from leakages into the pipe, producing a local temperature drop, served as indicator for leakages. Measurements were taken under varying measurement conditions, including the number of leakages as well as the positioning of the fiber optic cable. Experiments showed that leakages could be detected accurately with the proposed methodology, when measuring resolution, temperature gradient and measurement time were properly selected. Despite the successful application of DTS for leakage detection in this lab environment, challenges in real system applications may arise from temperature gradients within the pipe system over longer distances and the placement of the cable into the real pipe system.

The “dual probe heat pulse” (DPHP) method using actively heated fiber optic (AHFO) cables combined with distributed temperate sensing (DTS) technology has been developed for monitoring thermal properties and soil water content at the field scale. Field scale application, however, requires the use of robust and thicker fiber optic cables, corroborating the assumption of an infinite thin heat source in the evaluation process. We therefore included a semi-analytical solution of the heat transport equation into the evaluation procedure in order to consider the finite thermal properties of the heating cable without a calibration procedure to estimate effective thermal properties of the soil. To test this new evaluation procedure, we conducted a laboratory experiment and tested different heating scenarios to infer soil moisture from volumetric heat capacity. Estimates were made by analyzing the shift of the temperature amplitude at the sensing cable and the characteristics of the response heating curve. The results were compared with results from the calibrated infinite line source solution and in situ water content point measurements and showed a good approximation of thermal properties for strong and short heat pulses. Volumetric water content estimates are similarly accurate to the results of the calibrated infinite line source solution. Problems arose with the cable spacing and the resettlement process after burying the cable.