Throughout the alpine regions natural disasters are a common threat to human activities and development. The kind of natural disasters distinguishes the alpine regions from non-mountainous regions of Europe. They have thus to be treated in a common approach of as many regions as possible. The management of natural risks in a mountainous environment and the prevention of disasters requires a broad and accessible information basis. A high priority in the information needs may be attributed to data about former disasters, which must be available as the baseline for interdisciplinary and interregional research and provides an important decision factor for common actions to prevent disasters and deal with natural risks. But the information needs - defined by the practitioners of spatial planning, risk prevention, civil protection and catastrophe management - are not yet being met in terms of structured data. DIS-ALP will help to harmonise the information basis and make them more easily accessible and integrated in spatial decision-making processes.

This improved and homogenised information base will help to use risk information in danger zoning and activity zoning as well as in regional and sectoral spatial development concepts.

• Increase disaster information availability and access (GIS-based internet-information system, based on homogenised disaster “thesaurus”) and thus improve modelling of risk probability,

• knowledge-transfer about disasters and their documentation,

• improvement of field-documentation process via new tools and integration of disaster documentation into spatial planning and risk management.