The Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES) has been widely adopted in Canada and also applied in different European mountain regions. Initial implementations relied on manual work-flows. However, advances in open-source data and software availability have sparked the development of automated workflows and their application to areas in Norway, Canada, Switzerland, the Pyrenees, or Bulgaria. We apply an AutoATES work-flow for a 700 km2 model region in Tyrol, Austria. The work-flow comprises sub-modules for (i) potential release area (PRA) delineation, (ii) avalanche runout modeling, and (iii) a final classification step. Focus is laid on avalanches up to size 3 to capture avalanche situations and sizes typical for skier involvement. We informed parametrization of the sub-models by utilizing observational data from our study area and openly available data from other Alpine regions and evaluated results of the runout model for 100 randomly selected avalanches against expected dimensions of size 3 avalanches. Results indicate the applicability of the method for our region, but also highlight current limitations. The need for local adaptation of model parameters is emphasized and the use of a fourth “extreme terrain” class for areas like our pilot region is encouraged. Future developments should be directed towards introducing an additional PRA segmentation step, and an update of the avalanche runout model to better account for avalanche release area and track characteristics, and avalanche-forest interactions. An evaluation of automatically generated against manual ATES maps and a comparison of different classified avalanche terrain map products are still ongoing and expected to provide further insights. Keywords: ATES, automated avalanche terrain classification, PRA modeling, avalanche runout modeling
