Automated Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES) mapping – local validation and optimization in western Canada

Sykes, John; Toft, Håvard; Haegeli, Pascal; Statham, Grant

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-947-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-947-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-947-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 3

Research article

|

20 Mar 2024

Research article |

| 20 Mar 2024

Automated Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES) mapping – local validation and optimization in western Canada

John Sykes, Håvard Toft, Pascal Haegeli, and Grant Statham

Data sets

Automated Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES) mapping – Local validation and optimization in Western Canada – Data and Code John Sykes et al. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZXJW5

Model code and software

AutoATES-v2.0 Håvard Toft et al. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10712035

Automated Avalanche Terrain Exposure Scale (ATES) mapping – Local validation and optimization in Western Canada – Data and Code John Sykes et al. https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/ZXJW5

Short summary

The research validates and optimizes an automated approach for creating classified snow avalanche terrain maps using open-source geospatial modeling tools. Validation is based on avalanche-expert-based maps for two study areas. Our results show that automated maps have an overall accuracy equivalent to the average accuracy of three human maps. Automated mapping requires a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods and opens the door for large-scale mapping of mountainous terrain.