Potentials and perspectives of comparative historical flood research in the Alps

Historical disaster research has become a key topic in environmental and climate history during the last 20 years. However, transnational research projects have been restricted mostly to large river systems such as the Danube or the Rine rivers, but less on Alpine landscapes. This paper tries to investigate possible fields of interdisciplinary cooperation at a transnational Alpine scale and will highlight the potential of such comparative “environmental area studies” in a historical perspective.