ASAM - Automated Snow and Avalanche Mapping

Avalanche information from Space

The main goal of the ASAM project is to explore and develop methodology supporting the vision of a future service providing national authorities with hind-cast and near real-time snow and avalanche information retrieved from Earth Observation data.

The project "Towards an automated snow property and avalanche mapping system" (ASAM) is a two year project (2013-2015) which deals with the applicability of remote sensing methods for avalanche applications. The project is funded by the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC) through ESA's PRODEX-programme (PROgramme de Développement d'Expériences scientifiques) of the European Space Agency (ESA).

In many mountain regions of Norway snow avalanches pose a risk to road and railway passengers as well as tourists, skiers and other users during the winter season. Each year, snow avalanches hit populated areas and parts of the transport network, leading to the destruction of buildings and infrastructure, sometimes also to the loss of lives.

Much of the country is remote and knowledge of exactly where avalanches are likely occure, or have taken place, is a challenge task for the authorities. Earth observation satellites, therefore represent a potentially important source of information.

Explore and develop methodology

The following sub-goals have been set to support the main goal:

• Develop sufficiently mature pattern recognition techniques to detect the outline of avalanches in high-resolution (HR) and very-high resolution (VHR) optical satellite data.
• Investigate whether Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data could be used for the detection of avalanches, and to which extent.
• Develop and validate retrieval algorithms for snow variables essential for the characterisation of the snowpack for avalanche risk prediction and warning.

The work is done in two technical work packages, as described in the sub-prosject section:

• Avalanche pattern recognition
• Snow variable retrieval

The ASAM-project "Towards an automated snow property and avalanche mapping system" is a two year project (2013-2015) which deals with the applicability of remote sensing methods for avalanche applications. The project is funded by the Norwegian Space Centre (NSC) through ESA's PRODEX-programme (PROgramme de Développement d'Expériences scientifiques) of the European Space Agency (ESA).

The project is coordinated by NGI and carried out together with the Norwegian Computing Centre (NR), the Northern Research Centre (NORUT), and the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE).

ASAM is organised in three workpackages (WP), with WP1 being concerned with the administrative and management aspects of the project and WP2 and WP3 being the technical workpackages.

Norwegian Geotechnical Institute NGI. 2015. Towards an automated snow property and avalanche mapping system (ASAM) - Avalanche recognition and snow variable retrieval, version 2 (Technical report). Prepared by: Frauenfelder, R., Malnes E., Solberg, R., Müller, K.; based on contributions from: Engeset, R., Eckerstorfer, M., Frauenfelder, R., Hindberg, H., Lato, M.J., Larsen, S.Ø., Malnes, E., Müller, K., Salberg, A.-B., Ragulina, G., Solberg, R., Trier, Ø.D., Vickers, H. NGI Report no. 20130092-04-R. 127 p. https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3169812

Eckerstorfer, M., Bühler, Y., Frauenfelder, R., Malnes, E. 2016. Remote sensing of snow avalanches: recent advances, potential, and limitations – a review. Cold Regions Science and Technology 121: 126–140. doi:10.1016/j.coldregions.2015. 11.001.

Eckerstorfer, M., Malnes, E., Frauenfelder, R., Domaas, U., Brattlien, K. 2014. Avalanche Debris Detection Using Satellite-Borne Radar and Optical Remote Sensing. Proceedings of the International Snow Science Workshop 2014, Banff, Canada: p. 122–128; http://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/item/2039.

Frauenfelder, R., Lato, M.J., Biskupič, M. 2015. Using eCognition to automatically detect and map avalanche deposits from the spring 2009 avalanche cycle in the Tatra mountains, Slovakia. The 36^th International Symposium on Remote Sensing of Environment, 11-15 May 2015, Berlin, Germany, ISRSE36-267-3. https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/ISRSE36/ISRSE36-267-3.pdf

Frauenfelder, R., Solberg, R., Øyen Larsen, S., Salberg, A.-B., Bjordal, H. 2012. Remote-sensing derived avalanche inventory data. Proceedings, 2012 International Snow Science Workshop, Anchorage, Alaska: p. 398–402, https://arc.lib.montana.edu/snow-science/item/1708

Frauenfelder, R., Vöge, M., Ekseth, K.K., Ragulina, G., Lato, M.J., Biskupič, M. 2016. Remote sensing as a tool for early recognition of mountain hazards. Proceedings of the 13^th Interpraevent congress, 30 May to 2 June 2016, Lucerne, Switzerland, p. 86–87.

Frauenfelder, R., Glassett, T., Jaedicke, C., Vöge, M., Robiati, C. 2016. The Eye in the sky: avalanche mapping from space. Proceedings, 2016 International Snow Science Workshop, October 2-7, 2016, Breckenridge, Colorado, p. 585–588.

Frauenfelder, R., Lato, M.J., Biskupič, M. 2022. Snow Avalanche Detection and Mapping by Satellite Remote Sensing. IGARSS 2022 - 2022 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: pp. 3872-3875, doi: 10.1109/IGARSS46834.2022.9884381.

Lato, M., Frauenfelder, R., Bühler, Y. 2012. Automated detection of snow avalanche deposits: segmentation and classification of optical remote sensing imagery. Nat. Haz. And Earth. Syst. Sci., 12, 2893–2906, 2012. doi:10.5194/nhess-12-2893-2012.

Malnes, E., Eckerstorfer, M., Larsen, Y., Frauenfelder, R., Jónsson, Á., Jaedicke, C., Solbø, S. 2013. Remote sensing of avalanches in northern Norway using Synthetic Aperture Radar. Proceedings, International Snow Science Workshop ISSW, Grenoble, Oct 2013.