Work package 1 - hazard disposition ¶

The overall aim of work package WP 1 is to explore changes of the hazard potential of alpine mass movements under a changing climate. The focus will be on how the disposition of potentially hazardous deposits (such as snow, ice, rock and sediments) on slopes is affected by changing climatic conditions and how this will bring about changes in the frequency, size and spatial distribution of snow, rock, and ice avalanches as well as debris flows.

We intend to develop scenarios to be used in work package WP2, where the dynamics and evolution of alpine mass movements will be investigated in more detail.

Work package WP1 consists of six closely related research tasks. Central to all these is a common set of climate predictions to define the initial release conditions of mass movements. We will therefore collaborate with MeteoSwiss to assemble the necessary input data as well as appropriate methods for downscaling and to extrapolate past meteorological time series to include expected changes in a warming climate.

The remaining tasks will focus on improving our understanding of how disturbances introduced by climate can influence triggering processes and advance our modelling capabilities to predict changes in triggering events. This will result in triggering scenarios accounting for changes in the expected magnitude and frequency of rapid mass movements for practical application (using e.g. the rock fall model RAMMS).