Item: Statistical Nowcast of Avalanche Activity at the Regional Scale
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Title: Statistical Nowcast of Avalanche Activity at the Regional Scale
Proceedings: International Snow Science Workshop 2016 Proceedings, Breckenridge, CO, USA
Authors:
- Stephan Harvey [ WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos Dorf, Switzerland ]
- Alec van Herwijnen [ WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos Dorf, Switzerland ]
- Bettina Richter [ WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos Dorf, Switzerland ]
Date: 2016-10-02
Abstract: Forecasting natural avalanche activity is challenging. Events are relatively rare and several contributory factors affecting the formation of dry- or wet-snow avalanches have to be evaluated. In contrast to previous statistical avalanche forecast models which focus on specific avalanche types or small scales, in this study we developed a model to predict avalanche days for an entire winter season at the regional scale. We therefore analysed an avalanche catalogue consisting of observed avalanches in the region of Davos, Switzerland, over the last 13 years (2003/04 to 2015/16). In combination with data from an automatic weather station and simulated snow cover properties from the model SNOWPACK, we trained random forest models by applying different methods to predict avalanche days. Overall, the predictive performance was in line with other similar studies. However, substantial differences in performance were observed among the 13 winter seasons. Surprisingly, the performance of models without snow cover data from the SNOWPACK simulations was very similar. These results suggest that there is no strong correlation between avalanche activity and snow cover properties, highlighting the limitations of obtained avalanche activity data through visual observations. While more work is still required, the reasonable performance of our statistical model to predict avalanche days show that automatically predicting regional avalanche activity using an automatic weather stations is feasible.
Object ID: ISSW16_P4.04.pdf
Language of Article: English
Presenter(s):
Keywords: avalanche forecasting, avalanche activity, statistical model, random forest, SNOWPACK
Page Number(s): 1173-1179
Subjects: statistical model avalanche forecasting SNOWPACK
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