AvaRange – Using Sensor Network Ranging Techniques to Explore the Dynamics of Avalanches

Cortina d'Ampezzo

2016

4 S.

BandaufführungSonderdruck

196562

Abstract Snow avalanches are an ever-present reality in alpine regions They can cause heavy damage to settlements and infrastructure. Thus, understanding the behavior and the dynamics of avalanches is an important challenge, both from the scientific, but certainly also from a societal point of view. Current techniques of modeling and simulation of avalanche dynamics are restricted to initial and final conditions, but do not allow to precisely assess the inner dynamics. We are working on a measurement based approach to derive a completely new set of models also taking these inner dynamics into consideration. AvaRange adapts ranging techniques that we successfully applied to sensor networks to track particles that move with the avalanche (in experimental setups, we are talking about an artificially triggered avalanche in carefully protected environments). In particular, we place sensor nodes that communicate with each other in rugged spheres and deploy them in an avalanche slope. After triggering the avalanche, the sensor nodes collect ranging data to determine their relative position. This data combined with data from inertial sensors should produce 3D positions over time and, thus, give us the possibility to greatly improve existing avalanche models.