AMAS Services

AMAS – Austrian Multi-Hazard Impact-Based Advice Service – Bringing the full picture together for crisis management

Extreme situations rarely fit neatly into one discipline. Heavy rainfall may lead to flooding and landslides; heat can affect health, water supply and critical infrastructure; earthquakes or other hazards can trigger cascading consequences.

AMAS is  GeoSphere Austria's multi-hazard, impact-based advice service initiative for civil protection and crisis management initiative. It combines scientific expertise with the operational knowledge of regional and national partners and translates complex hazard information into actionable situational awareness. But AMAS is not one institution. AMAS is a partnership-driven servive. Sustained, operated and generated by and through the AMAS Partnerships.  The architecture brings together expertise from meteorology, hydrology, geology, gravitational mass movements, avalanches, earthquakes, environmental hazards, climate, space weather and many other relevant domains.

AMAS is more than expert exchange. It is a partnership-driven service: civil protection authorities and operational partners contribute their own knowledge about exposure, vulnerabilities, ongoing interventions and local conditions.

Together, these perspectives create a more complete picture than any individual discipline can provide.

AMAS focuses not only on what the hazard is, but on what it could mean:

• What areas and sectors could be affected?
• Could several hazards interact?
• What are the most likely and plausible developments?
• How confident are we?
• Are there factors that could amplify the impacts?
• What information is most relevant for preparedness and response?

Regular Situational Awareness Meetings (SAM) support preparedness and monitoring. During relevant or rapidly evolving situations, Fast-SAM provides more frequent exchanges and concise assessments.

GeoSphere Austria and its partner organisations continue to issue warnings, reports and products within their respective mandates for individual hazards.

AMAS brings these individual sources of information together and adds an integrated, impact-oriented assessment for crisis management. An AMAS assessment can therefore consider several warnings, additional expert information, uncertainty, exposure and the operational situation at the same time.

AMAS is co-designed and co-produced with its partners and end-users.

Regional warning centres, civil protection authorities, scientific and technical experts, emergency organisations and other relevant partners contribute to the service according to the needs of each region and situation.

The objective is simple: bring the right people and the right information together early enough to support better decisions.

The AMAS Academy supports the service through training, exercises, structured knowledge exchange and cross-disciplinary learning.

It helps experts and partners develop a common understanding of hazards, impacts, uncertainty, communication and operational procedures, while also creating space to learn from real events and continuously improve the service.

The Academy is therefore an important part of maintaining quality and coherence as AMAS grows across regions and hazard domains.

AMAS is designed as a scalable and adaptable service framework, not as a fixed technical product.

Its core principles - multi-hazard integration, impact orientation, partnership and co-production - remain the same, while the exact configuration can be adapted to different institutional structures, hazard profiles, operational capacities and end-user needs.

This makes the concept transferable to other regions and countries while allowing local organisations and responsibilities to remain fully embedded in the service.

• 7 Austrian regional and national AMAS deployments
• + 1 AMAS Global service
• 60+ operational partners
• 3 operational modes: SAM · Fast-SAM · Watch
• 2 regular exchanges per week in the standard SAM model
• Multiple hazard domains: Weather · Hydrology · Flooding · Geology · Landslides · Avalanches · Earthquakes · Environment · Heat/Climate · Space Weather · emerging hazards - CBRN - anthropogenic
• Regional + national partnerships: connecting GeoSphere Austria with civil protection, regional authorities, specialised agencies and operational partners across Austria
• Since 2022 from the first pilot in Salzburg to a growing Austrian multi-hazard service network

Salzburg · Styria · Lower Austria · Vienna · Burgenland · Tyrol · National / BMI-Lagezentrum · AMAS Global