AvalMapper

AvalMapper

Snow avalanches kill, on average, 22 people per year in the Swiss Alps alone. This makes them the most deadly natural hazard, responsible for more than one-third of all natural hazard fatalities. The main source of information on avalanche hazards in Switzerland for authorities, safety personnel of ski resorts, and traffic lines, as well as the public, is the avalanche bulletin of the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research SLF. Spatially continuous, near real-time information on avalanche activity, which would be key information for the bulletin, is not available today due to the remoteness of many alpine regions. The AvalMapper project aims to fill this gap by creating an aerial system for collecting high-resolution avalanche occurrence data over affected regions in the Swiss Alps. The partners aim to develop and test a long-endurance (multi-hour) autonomous aircraft that will use online adaptive planning techniques and machine learning to identify and map avalanches using near-infrared imagery.

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  • Organization
    ETH Zurich - Autonomous Systems Lab
  • Profession
    Aerial system to identify and map avalanches

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