SFU Avalanche Research Program

A busy and successful first day at the ISSW is complete! ✅ The fun continues with presentations tomorrow from Florian, Eeva, Anneliese, Pascal, and Anne! Scroll through to see the “when, who, and what” of our day tomorrow.

Thanks to for the 📸

It is with great excitement and honour that we introduce you to Dr. Florian Herla who successfully defended (i.e., totally rocked!) his PhD dissertation today. 🎉💫👏

On behalf of the entire SARP team - it has been a pleasure and honour to be part of your journey. We are immensely proud of you and are looking forward to your next steps in the avalanche safety community and beyond!

You can find Florian’s research here: https://avalancheresearch.ca/team/herla/

Recordings of our presentations at this year’s CAA Spring Conference are now available online! You can find them all linked here: http://www.avalancheresearch.ca/presentation-videos/
1. Pascal Haegeli - Facilitating a More User-centered Design of Avalanche Safety Products and Services

2. Simon Horton & Pascal Haegeli - Research on Avalanche Problems: Where do We Go Next to Improve Hazard Assessments?

3. Rosie Langford & Pascal Haegeli - How do Winter Backcountry Recreationists Make Avalanche Risk Management Decisions?

4. Anneliese Neweduk & Pascal Haegeli - More Holistic and Informative Approach for Characterizing Backcountry Community

5. Florian Herla, Pascal Haegeli, Simon Horton & Patrick Mair- Validating Snowpack Simulations for Critical Layers

6. John Sykes, Pascal Haegeli, Roger Atkins, & Mike Welch - Characterizing the 2023 Guiding Season – from the guide on the ground and from GPS and avalanche terrain data

ay back in January 2022, we shared some insights about how bulletin users interpret the danger scale from research completed by master’s student, Abby Morgan. Today we have some exciting news about that research… It has been published in the Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Journal!

🟢🟡🟠🔴⚫️

Titled "A user perspective on the avalanche danger scale – insights from North America", the study used 3195 online survey responses to explore how backcountry recreationists interpret and use avalanche danger ratings. The findings of this study are important for avalanche warning services since the danger rating scale is a key tool for communicating avalanche hazard to the public. In the discussion section of this paper, the authors, Abby Morgan, Pascal Haegeli, Henry Finn, and Patrick Mair, elaborate on opportunities for optimizing the danger scale to better meet the needs of users who depend on the ratings the most.

You can find the paper here: http://www.avalancheresearch.ca/pubs/2023_morgan_dangerscale/