Abstract ID: 3.11254 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

Site-specific avalanche risk assessment by panels of local people has a long tradition in many alpine regions. These risk managers are often referred to as avalanche commissions. Their decisions are significant for a functioning everyday life in mountainous regions in wintertime: they ensure a responsible use of infrastructures, transportation of people and goods, tourism, energy supply, etc. The avalanche commissioners’ job is assessing the local risk and suggesting proper mitigation measures to minimize it.

Avalanche commissions aggregate their own observations and expertise, weather station data, forecasts and model outputs as well as the information provided by the regional avalanche warning services. Documentation and proper communication are key. In this context, national and provincial borders often encumber the cooperation between neighboring avalanche commissions and introduce unnecessary complications.

The Interreg project CAIROS aims to foster cross-border collaboration between multinational and multilingual regions within the European Union. Tyrol, South Tyrol and Trentino represent such an “EU region” with many historic, cultural and geographic similarities. Standardizing the working methods and training of avalanche commissions across the Austrian-Italian border is a major goal of the project. This will support consistent decisions and, consequently, a greater acceptance of potential restrictions by the public. During the CAIROS project, a general survey of the avalanche commissions in the project area is conducted. Furthermore, the project is based on three main pillars: (1) a training curriculum that can be used in all three regions despite legal and organizational differences, (2) a common software platform to facilitate information gathering, decision-making, documentation and communication, taking an open-source and mobile-first approach, (3) easy-to-use daily avalanche simulations derivated from the open-source avalanche simulation tool AvaFrame.

With its contribution to IMC 2025, the CAIROS team would like to highlight the proven system of avalanche commissions as a risk-conscious, site-specific approach to mitigate avalanche hazards incorporating the knowledge of the native population.