**5. Conclusions**

The aim of this research was to examine the development of land use in flood-prone areas in an Austrian Alpine region and the resulting potential for land use conflicts. Research was guided by two research questions:


A lack of space because of the topography, pressure on land due to settlement dynamics, and the importance of land for regional food production are key factors when it comes to the land use pressure in flood-prone areas and the limitations of a making space for rivers policy.

The increasing settlement development in flood-prone areas highlights the importance of spatial planning to preserve areas for flood runoff and retention and thus to reduce flood risk. Further research is needed on spatial planning approaches, particularly in areas with residual risk to address the 'levee-effect' and the increasing flood damage potential. Additionally, a focus in future flood risk managemen<sup>t</sup> should be put on a more detailed differentiation of agricultural land based on economic and ecologic functions as well as on the flood-adapted cultivation of farmland.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, L.J.; formal analysis, L.J., S.H., K.S., and K.W.; writing— original draft preparation, L.J., S.H., K.S., and K.W.; writing—review and editing, L.J., S.H., K.S., W.S., and K.W.; visualization, L.J. and K.S.; project administration, W.S. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** This research was conducted within the research project "Integrated Flood Risk Management in Mountain Areas: Assessing Sectoral Interdependencies, Conflicts and Options for Policy Coordination" (PoCo-FLOOD) which was funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) within the Earth System Sciences (ESS) research program. Lena Junger was supported by the Doctoral

School "Human River Systems in the 21st Century (HR21)" of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.

**Data Availability Statement:** The datasets used are not readily available because the data are partly subjected to third party restriction. Selected data are available on request.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
