Item: Airborne Detection of Avalanche Victims with Ground Penetrating Radar
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Title: Airborne Detection of Avalanche Victims with Ground Penetrating Radar
Proceedings: Proceedings of the 2006 International Snow Science Workshop, Telluride, Colorado
Authors:
- Achim Heilig [ alpS Centre for Natural Hazard Management, Innsbruck, Austria ]
- Martin Schneebeli [ WSL Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF, Davos, Switzerland ]
Date: 2006
Abstract: The detection of buried avalanche victims not wearing a beacon is an important problem for rescue operations. The development of a fast and reliable method not depending on active or passive location devices would simplify the task for an organized rescue. A ground penetrating radar with high sampling frequency and the possibility to be mounted on a helicopter could be a possible solution. Considering the necessity to improve techniques for organized search operations, our goal is to create a plug and play system, which is mounted below a helicopter and scans in a fixed raster an avalanche deposit automatically. The radar data retrieved should be interpretable easily by a layperson or by an automatic process algorithm that tells the user where a victim is located. From a small self-made aerial railway system the radar signatures for different snow and environmental conditions were measured about 6 m above the snow surface. The data we gathered in winter 2006 showed that even extremely different dry snow conditions are deeply penetrable by a 400 MHz GPR antenna and a phantom body (3 water bags) could easily be detected.
Object ID: issw-2006-660-666.pdf
Language of Article: English
Presenter(s): Unknown
Keywords: ground penetrating radar (gpr), avalanche victim, airborne detection
Page Number(s): 660-666
Subjects: avalanche victims penetrometer airborne optical remote sensing
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