Land-use planning

For­est De­vel­op­ment Plan (FDP)

The For­est De­vel­op­ment Plan was drafted by ex­perts and contains recommendations on the func­tions of the en­tire Aus­trian for­est based on the For­est Law. It is a su­per­or­di­nate strategy to assess the for­est con­di­tions on a fed­eral level, iden­tify the key func­tions of forests and to help main­tain all for­est func­tions for the long term through future-oriented planning. All policies re­quired to achieve these goals have to be marked and ranked ac­cord­ing to their lev­els of ur­gency; ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tions to im­ple­ment them will then be launched based on this ranking. The For­est De­vel­op­ment Plan is an im­por­tant basis for po­lit­i­cal and legal de­ci­sions of rel­e­vance to forestry.
 

Haz­ard Zone Plan

The Haz­ard Zone Plan, which aims at mitigating the effects of floods and avalanches, is given to all Aus­trian mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties that in­clude flood-, avalanche- and/or ero­sion-prone areas. The Haz­ard Zone Plan is an area-based survey, which contains recommendations from experts that serve as a basis for spa­tial plan­ning as well as for projects from both the con­struc­tion and se­cu­rity sec­tors.
This was emphasised following the floods of 2002, which highlighted how im­por­tant it is to con­sider risk-prone areas in land-use plan­ning.

Con­tent of the Haz­ard Zone Plan

After de­tailed ex­am­i­na­tions in the catch­ment areas, coupled with an evaluation of ear­lier re­sults, the areas most at risk from haz­ards such as floods and avalanches have been iden­ti­fied. This then forms the basis of the land-use plan. Based on the year-long ex­pe­ri­ence of the per­sons work­ing in this field the risk level of the in­di­vid­ual plots of land is il­lus­trated by means of the dis­tinc­tion be­tween Red and Yel­low Haz­ard Zones.

The Red Haz­ard Zone com­prises the areas which are so se­verely en­dan­gered by floods or avalanches that their per­ma­nent use for set­tle­ment and trans­port is not pos­si­ble, or pos­si­ble only at dis­pro­por­tion­ately high ex­pen­di­ture, since property and infrastructure will be severely damaged by the hazard events outlined above. The con­struc­tion of new build­ings is there­fore ab­solutely pro­hib­ited in Red Haz­ard Zones.

The Yel­low Haz­ard Zone com­prises all other flood or avalanche prone areas whose per­ma­nent use for set­tle­ment or trans­port pur­poses is im­paired due to this risk.

Tech­ni­cal Forestry Plan

The Tech­ni­cal Forestry Plan is a useful guide for for­est plan­ning. Its ap­pli­ca­tion per­mits promising co­op­er­a­tions in for­est Management.

This plan has been pre­pared on the one hand to deal with key is­sues facing forests, for instance the strength­en­ing of in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­ity or the mo­ti­va­tion of for­est own­ers and, on the other hand, to cope with the in­creas­ing chal­lenges which forestry is con­fronted with due to the emergence of "hor­i­zon­tal is­sues" such as na­ture con­ser­va­tion, and the preservation of bio­di­ver­sity, water re­sources, cul­tural as­pects and tourism.