Supporting the forecast of snow avalanches in the canton of glarus in eastern switzerland: A case study

Abstract

Snow avalanches pose a serious threat in alpine regions. They may cause significant damage and fatal accidents. Assessing the local avalanche hazard is therefore of vital importance. This assessment is based, amongst others, on daily collected meteorological data as well as expert knowledge concerning avalanche activity. To a data set comprising meteorological and avalanche data collected for the Canton of Glarus in Eastern Switzerland over a period of 40 years, we applied different machine learning strategies aiming at modeling a decision support system in avalanche forecasting.