The historical development of the Geophysical Service of Austria, comprising the national geomagnetic, gravimetric and seismological services as well as the Applied Geophysics Section located at the Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik (ZAMG) in Vienna in Austria, is presented. Achievements, changes and challenges of the department from its modest beginning in 1851 until 2020 are described, including the Conrad Observatory.

The work demonstrates how seismic networks installed in the Alps can be used for country-wide real-time monitoring of rockslide activity. We suggest simple methods that allow us to detect, locate, and characterize rockslides using the seismic signals they generate. We developed an automatic procedure to locate rockslides with kilometer accuracy over hundreds of kilometers of distance. Our findings highlight how seismic networks can help us to understand the triggering of rockslides.

Since 2002 OGS in Italy, ZAMG in Austria and ARSO in Slovenia were exchanging seismic data in real time via internet. This was not good for civil defense scopes because internet is not reliable: therefore, in 2012 the Protezione Civile di Bolzano in Italy joined OGS, ZAMG and ARSO in the Interreg IV Italia-Austria "SeismoSAT" project aimed in connecting the seismic data centers in real time via satellite.