HAMPEL

AUSTRIA (see also List of Individuals)

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29.5.1900 Stockerau/A - 31.12.1994 Innsbruck/A

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Robert Hampel graduated in 1922 as a forest engineer from the Hochschule für Bodenkultur BOKU, Vienna. He then moved to Bludenz and there was involved in the improvement of torrent dams. From 1927 to 1936 Hampel stayed with the Graz forest section before returning to Innsbruck, where he was appointed Forstmeister in 1939 and then from 1945 until retirement in 1965 headed the Tyrol forest section. Hampel was decorated from eleven communities of Tyrol as Honorary Citizen for protection against natural disasters; he was the recipient of the Tyrolean Merit in 1967, the Honorary Doctorate from BOKU in 1982, and he was an Honorary Member of the Association of Torrents and Avalanches from 1990.

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The Austrian avalanche register as an important design basis for improvements and the protection against disasters was initiated by Hampel as early as in 1950, and published in 1975 as one of the first worldwide. Shortly after World War II he founded the Austrian Snow Research Institute in the Wattener Lizum, an institution similar to that in Davos, Switzerland, where all questions relating to snow are scientifically investigated. Besides, Hampel took interest in the morphology and the hydraulics of torrents, along with means to protect valleys from debris and flash flows, from inundations by adequate technical works. His investigations related to the hydrology and the hydraulics of torrents with a extremely rough and steep bed, the optimum dissipation of excess energy and the design of torrent dams for wood and sediment retention.

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_{Aulitzky, H. (1995). Dipl.-Ing. DDr.h.c. Robert Hampel - Tod und Vermächtnis eines grossen Österreichers. Wildbachund Lawinenverbau 59: 5-19. P}

_{Hampel, R. (1936). Kulturarbeiten in Wildbächen. Vereinszeitschrift der Diplomingenieure der Wildbachund Lawinenverbauung 11.}

_{Hampel, R. (1949). Probleme der Wildbachverbauung. Bauwissenschaft 3(3/4): 12-14. Hampel, R. (1954). Forstliche Ertragselemente. Mitteilung 51. Forstliche Bundesversuchsanstalt: Mariabrunn.}

_{Hampel, R. (1962). Ziele und Leistungen der Wildbachverbauung in Tirol. Centralblatt gesamtes Forstwesen 79(4): 209-221.}

_{Hampel, R. (1977). Die Geschiebewirtschaft in Wildbächen. Wildbachund Lawinenverbau 41: 3-144.}

_{Hanausek, E. (1990). Zum 90. Geburtstag von wirklichem Hofrat i.R. Robert Hampel. Wildbachund Lawinenverbau 54: 1-10.}