Die Erde, der Mond und einige andere Himmelskörper sind aus Gesteinen aufgebaut. Gesteine sind aus meist mehreren Mineralen geformt und können daher als Mineralaggregate beschrieben werden. Minerale bestehen aus einem Element (z.B. Silber, Kupfer) oder einer chemischen Verbindung (z.B. Halit, NaCl) und aus einem festen, kristallinen, symmetrischen Körper, d.h. sie weisen eine Kristallstruktur mit regelmäßig angeordneten Atomen, Ionen oder Molekülen auf. Minerale sind auf natürliche Weise im Erdkörper gewachsen – und wurden durch einen geologischen Prozess gebildet.

Kashmir valley is a northwest-southeast directed, Neogene-Quaternary tectonic basin in the NW Himalaya. Due to the active tectonic set-up in and around this basin, this region has been struck by various destructive earthquakes (Ambraseys and Douglas, 2004). The October 8, 2005 Kashmir earthquake (Mw 7.6) was the most recent earthquake that shook the region.

The landforms of Austria are the direct consequence of a continuous interplay between tectonic and climatic forces that have built, destroyed and reshaped the surface of the most iconic mountain belt on Earth for almost 40 Million years. As such, landforms can only be understood with a thorough geological background. This paper gives an overview of the tectonic evolution, the geological build up and the landscape evolution in the Austrian territory. The tectonic evolution of the rocks forming the major tectonic units of Austria can be traced back to some 500 Million years when they were located at different ancient continents including Gondwana, Avalonia and Laurasia. In the late Palaeozoic, the basement rocks were affected by the Variscan tectonometamorphic event during amalgamation of the supercontinent Pangaea and by a Permian extensional event.

Inadequate in situ observations have been historical barriers in the development of hydrologic science. Additionally, with the changing climate and ever accelerating human activities, it is anticipated that water-related disasters such as flood, landslide, and drought will be more severe and frequent, thus threatening more regions around the world. Flooding, which is considered as one of the most hazardous disasters in both rural and urban areas, accounts for around one-third of all global geophysical hazards and causes significant human suffering, loss of life, and property damage.

There are about 800 million people all over the world who are exposed to the hazards from volcanic eruptions, according to the 2015 Global Assessment Report by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR, 2015). That assessment takes into account typical impact areas around volcanoes, extending up to tens of km, and in a few cases, to more than 100 km from the vent. People within such areas live under direct menace from a variety of hazardous volcanic phenomena: lava flows, pyroclastic flows, volcanic ash concentrations and accumulation, lahars, tsunamis, landslides and collapses of the volcanic structure, ground deformation, ground shaking, harmful gas concentrations, etc.

Tunnels are unlike any other civil engineering structures. In buildings or bridges, the building materials have defined properties and they can be tested to ensure they meet these, whereas this is not the case in tunnelling. Table 1.1 illustrates some of the issues associated with tunnel design when compared to above ground construction projects. Although a tunnel structure often needs support systems made up of concrete and steel, it is the ground that is the major part of the structure, and this can have both a supporting and a loading role.