The river Lutz as many other rivers in Austria was forced into a straight and narrow river bed. Several weirs were erected to stabilise the river bed, but which, too, impeded organism passability. After decades with several floods the protection measures were in bad condition. In 2005, a 500-years flood caused heavy damage along the river and destroyed a main railway line. This incident initiated comprehensive planning activities to improve both, the flood protection as well as the ecological status of the river. Several technical measures focussing on stabilising the river bed, increasing the discharge capacity and improving the ecological status such as a step-pool-ramp with variable width, an open rip-rap, an increased river width as well as embankment groynes as an ecological and dynamic bank protection instead of a bank reinforcement were proposed. These measures were tested for feasibility and optimized in a physical model experiment.

Calcium silicate masonry is characterized by a high loadbearing capacity. Despite the widespread use of calcium silicate masonry units as a building material in Germany, there have been no studies to specifically improve its resistance to bullet impact, which would result in a new, very specialized market segment for threatened infrastructure. Within the scope of a research project, fundamental knowledge was gained about the influence of manufacturing parameters on the impact resistance of calcium silicate masonry units. The investigations showed that both the type and proportion of coarse aggregate and the forming pressure play a decisive role. Based on these findings, calcium silicate masonry units can now be specifically optimized with regard to high impact resistance.

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