Methods of accounting the avalanche hazard for the territorial land-use planning in Russia

Abstract

The legislation of the Russian Federation establishes the need to take into account hazardous natural processes and their parameters in territorial planning, as well as presentation of them in the relevant documentation in the form of maps. In a number of countries, there is a long-standing practice of mapping the avalanche zones basing on the definition of different levels of danger, which are used to limit or ban the construction in avalanche zones, as well as to project the anti-avalanche activities. Russia has experience in assessing risk and mapping the avalanche danger, but the practice of making such plans in our country is still not developed. The purpose of this work is to determine and plot on map avalanche zones on the example of one of the actively developed mountain regions of Russia. The all-season mountain resort «Gorky Gorod», located on Krasnaya Polyana in the Krasnodar region, was chosen as the object of study. Two approaches to the accounting and mapping of avalanche hazard in territorial planning were tested. In the first case, occurrence and pressure of avalanches were the determining factors. In the second case, critical avalanche pressure values were used to determine their destructive impact effect. To determine indexes (indicators) of the avalanche hazard, the simulation of snow avalanches in the RAMMS program was performed. According to the results of modeling for area of the «Gorky Gorod» resort schemes of the avalanche zones were constructed on the basis of two different approaches, having no account for the anti-avalanche measures used there. A more detailed plan based on a combination of these two approaches had also been drawn up and analyzed. The required criteria for determining the boundaries of zones with different levels of the danger are the subject for discussion. However, the proposed division of avalanche-dangerous territory into zones with different levels of the hazard at the stage of territorial planning meets the requirements of the legislation and contributes to improving human security, reducing the avalanche risk, and mitigating the consequences of emergencies caused by avalanches.