Science in action
The podcast about security and disaster research in practice
In the DCNA podcast, we give a voice to "science in action".
We take a closer look at crisis and disaster research from different perspectives, we look behind the scenes of scientific work and provide insights into the work of researchers, emergency services and public authorities.
How are research results transferred to the relevant authorities? Which disciplines belong to disaster research? What does the work of scientists and emergency services look like? Our podcast provides answers to these (and many more) questions.
Listen to our podcast (which is currently only available in German) on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, YouTube or here on our website.
Do you have questions, suggestions or feedback in terms of the podcast, or would you like to suggest a guest? Reach out to us at podcast@dcna.at.
Season 4
Mountain sports and outdoor activities are more popular than ever. Unfortunately, they also come with a high number of accidents and emergencies: More than 300 people died in accidents in the Austrian mountains in 2024, and mountain rescue teams were called out to a total of more than 10,000 missions. In a new episode of "Science in Action," we take a closer look at the dangers and risks in the mountains. We discuss the challenges that mountain rescue teams are facing, what research into dangers in the mountains is focusing on and how it works. We also assess the last winter season and its lack of snow. Our guests this time are Michael Miggitsch (Austrian Mountain Rescue Service Association) and Ingrid Reiweger (Institute of Mountain Risk Engineering, BOKU University Vienna).
The floods that hit parts of Austria in September 2024 left many people with nothing. Once again, they demonstrated the massive damage that natural disasters can cause. Good spatial planning can help reduce the risk of such disasters. That’s what this episode of "Science in Action" is about. We discuss how spatial planning works in Austria, who decides where construction is allowed or prohibited, why hazard zones are so crucial, and what they look like. Our guests are Barbara Steinbrunner (Assistant and PhD candidate at the Institute of Spatial Planning at TU Vienna) and Robert Loizl (Head of the Hydraulic Engineering Division for the Province of Salzburg).
Population ageing, more people moving to cities, drones, robots, more and more intense extreme weather events... How will these and other trends influence disaster management in the future? And how can emergency organizations and authorities prepare for this today? These are the questions we try to answer in this episode of “Science in Action.” Our guests are crisis manager Andreas Herndler (Austrian Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology, BMK) and trend researcher Joachim Klerx (Center for Innovation Systems & Policy, Austrian Institue of Technology, AIT).
Security research aims to generate knowledge and find technologies that are suitable for making Austria safe in the future. To this end, researchers together with blue light organizations, authorities and operators of critical infrastructure receive public funding. In this episode of "Science in Action", we take a look at how this works, how research projects are created and how it is ensured that the results of these projects are not gathering dust instead of being used. This special episode was recorded at the Disaster Research Days 2024 in Vienna. Our guests are Horst Bischof (rector of TU Graz and chairman of DCNA), Ralph Hammer (Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance), Jeannette Klonk (Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG) and Oliver Seiffarth (European Commission/CERIS - Community for European Research and Innovation for Security).
Season 3
Crisis communication can be a challenge, especially when tasks are distributed between the federal and state governments. Besides that, crisis communication has recently changed significantly thanks to the internet and social networks. In this episode of “Science in Action”, we talk about these and other trends related to crisis communication - for example, the new disaster warnings via cell broadcast ("AT Alert"). Our guests are Elmar Rizzoli (State of Tyrol) and Cornelia Feyrer (University of Innsbruck).
Spontaneous volunteerism in emergency and disaster situations is a potential resource. But is this potential also being used well? In this episode of "Science in Action", we try to answer these and other questions. We discuss the concern that spontaneous helpers might create chaos during disaster response, what it takes to make collaboration with emergency organizations work, and why Team Österreich (a project to channel sponaneous volunteers before disaster strikes) is so special compared to other countries. Our guests: Gerry Foitik (Austrian Red Cross) and the clinical and health psychologist Barbara Juen (University of Innsbruck).
In late May 2024, a tornado made people in Graz hold their breath. However, tornadoes in Austria are not as rare as you might think: on average there are three to five per year. In this episode of "Science in Action", we look at how tornadoes form, whether they are becoming more frequent due to climate change, and how well the population and emergency organizations are prepared for extreme weather events like these. We also look at the lessons learned from the severe tornado in the Czech Republic in 2021. And we have the latest information about cell broadcast – i.e., about disaster warnings sent to smartphones. Our guests are Alois Holzer (ESSL - European Severe Storms Laboratory) and Stefan Kreuzer (Fire and Civil Protection Department, State of Lower Austria).
Many people in Austria have little or no insurance against certain natural hazards - including flooding. In a new episode of “Science in Action”, we talk about the insurance gap in disaster protection. We show what is going well in the insurance sector, where there is still room for improvement and what results science is providing. Our guests are Thomas Hlatky (Head of Reinsurance, GRAWE- one of the largest Central European insurance companies) and Thomas Hartung (Professor of Insurance Economics at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich).
25 years after the devastating avalanche accident in Galtür (Tyrol), we look at how avalanche protection in Austria has changed ever since. In this episode of "Science in Action", we also talk about the role of protective forests and what is currently happening in avalanche research. Our guests are Michaela Teich (Snow and Avalanche Department at the Federal Forest Research Center in Innsbruck) and Florian Rudolf-Miklau (Torrent and Avalanche Control and Protective Forest Policy Department, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management).
Season 2
VR headsets, tablets, huge databases ... Many processes in crisis and disaster management (but not all) have become digital. In this episode of "Science in Action", we look at what this digital transformation looks like, what the challenges are and how emergency organizations might exchange important data in the future. Our guests are Mario Rauch (Vienna Professional Fire Department) and Helmut Leopold (Austrian Institute of Technology).
We are celebrating our podcast’s 1st birthday with a special episode recorded at our disaster research conference at Montanuniversität Leoben. In this episode, our guests take a closer look on why the exchange between science and practitioners in the area of crises and disasters is so important, how it actually works and where there is still room for improvement. Our guests are Siegried Jachs (Head of Unit at the Federal Ministry of the Interior), Harald Kainz (former rector of TU Graz and chairman of DCNA), Eva Schulev-Steindl (rector of BOKU Vienna), Eva-Maria Kern (president of the University of the Bundeswehr Munich) and Christian Resch (DCNA’s managing director).
Industrial disasters no longer happen as often as they used to but the consequences of these accidents can still be devastating today. In order to prevent industrial disasters, prevention and a good safety culture are needed, says Harald Raupenstrauch (professor at Montanuniversität Leoben) in this episode on industrial hazards.
Robots and drones can support firefighters in forest fires, among other things, and ensure greater safety. In this episode of "Science in Action" we look at which tasks automated helpers can still take on, why science and practice have to work closely together in this area and what the voluntary fire brigade of Graz University of Technology is all about. Guests are the President of the Austrian Federal Fire Brigade Association Robert Mayer and Gerald Steinbauer-Wagner - Professor at Graz University of Technology and expert in the field of robotics.
Epizootics such as bird flu can spread quickly and then become a huge problem, especially for farms. In this episode of "Science in Action" we discuss, among other things, why these diseases are managed in a similar way to crises and disasters, why dogs are soon to be used to track down African swine fever and why climate change might soon bring new animal diseases to Austria. Our guests are animal health experts Christina Riedl and Florian Fellinger.
Further severe earthquakes in Turkey are likely in the coming years but it is generally not possible to precisely predict when earthquakes will hit. Find out why and how we can protect ourselves from the effects of earthquakes nevertheless in the first episode of Season 2. We talked to GeoSphere Austria seismologist Rita Meurers and the former geophysics head at the Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics Wolfgang Lenhardt.
Season 1
Barbara Juen, psychologist at the University of Innsbruck and renowned expert in the field of crisis intervention, talks about mental health as part of public health - especially in the context of crises and disasters.
Unfortunately, we cannot protect ourselves 100 percent from catastrophes of all kinds. But we can better understand and assess the corresponding risks and thus react better in the event of a disaster. In this episode, we discuss how this can be achieved in concrete terms and what role risk research plays. Our guest is André Gazsó from the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
Mass movements can be sudden and devastating, or they can be very slow. We talk to Barbara Schneider-Muntau from the University of Innsbruck about mass movements, their effects on Austria's natural and urban areas, and how research is carried out on them.
In this episode, we talk to Helmut Habersack, Head of the Institute for Hydraulic Engineering, Hydraulics and River Research at BOKU Vienna, about floods in general and what research and practice have learned from the 2002 flood disaster.
Harald Vacik (BOKU Vienna) talks about how many forest fires there are in Austria and how emergency services and research deal with them, why there are more forest fires in Austria, and what we have to expect in the future.
Stefan Rass (Johannes Kepler University Linz) and Günter Gruber (Technical University Graz) on modern critical infrastructure, intelligent systems in use and the role of waste water - and what happens when the waste water disposal does not work.
Intro music:
"Rollin at 5" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/