Geographical Atlas of Natural Disasters in Slovenia
The Department of Natural Hazards at the ZRC SAZU Anton Melik Geographical Institute has created an online Geographical Atlas of Natural Disasters in Slovenia with the acronym GANNS, which aesthetically suggests the name GAMS. The atlas is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Slovenian geographer academician Prof. Ivan Gams.
The Atlas contains basic information on natural hazards and natural disasters in Slovenia. It includes data on historical avalanches, floods, landslides, earthquakes, forest fires and damage caused by natural disasters, as well as information on the hazard posed by these processes. The Geographical Atlas of Natural Disasters in Slovenia is one of the few collections of its kind. There are a few important online atlases around the world that show natural disasters by country, but few collections show the situation for a country's territory in such a complex way (26 categories) for the last hundred and fifty years.
Its aim is to inform the interested and general public about the types and frequency of natural disasters that have occurred on the territory of Slovenia since the 14th century, more frequently since 1750, and more specifically for the last 150 years, when newspaper sources are available. In total, it comprises approximately 5,000 units and contains just over 100,000 data, of which the relevant ones are displayed in the online GIS.
The Atlas is important for improving the knowledge of natural hazards in a given landscape, both for permanent residents and occasional visitors such as tourists and hikers. It is also the basis for space management, which includes both the construction of buildings and, in particular, critical infrastructure, such as roads in Alpine landscapes.
Due to their complex understanding of landscape processes geographers were among the first to study the most important natural hazards in Slovenia, with Anton Melik carrying out the first complex geographical study of floods after the Celje floods of 5 and 6 June 1954, Ivan Gams studying snow avalanches in the early 1950s (Gams 1955), and Drago Meze studying landslides in the 1960s. The first foundations of the atlas were also laid at the Anton Melik Geographical Institute of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences in the 1980s, as evidenced by archival material. Since 2017 these data have been updated, digitized and prepared for publication in an online atlas that is searchable and browsable. The Atlas is available as an online geographical information system at ganns.zrc-sazu.si since November 2023.
Link to the Geographical Atlas of Natural Disasters in Slovenia.