Estimate of uncertainties in avalanche hazard mapping

Abstract

The present work addresses the urgent demand for methods of quantifying the uncertainties inherent in the current procedures for avalanche hazard assessment. A Monte Carlo approach to hazard mapping is proposed for this purpose. This statistical sampling-analysis method allows us to evaluate the probability distributions of the relevant variables for avalanche hazard assessment - essentially runout distance and impact pressure - once the release variables and the model parameters are expressed in terms of suitable probability distributions. In this way it is possible to explicitly account for uncertainties both in the input-data definition of the dynamic models and in the mapping results. The overall methodology is presented in detail and applied to a real-world avalanche mapping problem. The one-dimensional version of the VARA models is used for avalanche dynamics simulations.