White Risk – Interactive Avalanche Learning Cd

The best way to reduce avalanche accidents, is good avalanche forecasting, warning and education. Avalanches are influenced by a large variety of different factors, that have to be taken into consideration. Understanding the cross linking between these factors is very important but not easy to explain in books or verbally. A CD-ROM provides an ideal and up-to date medium of presenting and illustrating the entire complexity of avalanche education in an attractive and interactive way. Therefore the SLF, in collaboration with the National Accident Insurance Company (SUVA), started a project to produce and publish an interactive CD-ROM about avalanche prevention, especially aimed at backcountry and off-piste skiers and boarders. This CD, called “WHITE RISK”, should circulate avalanche knowledge gained through research, as well as from practical experience, in a way that is easily accessible to skiers and boarders. The CD provides an opportunity of learning by seeing and hearing or even better by interactive action from the user himself. The possibility of viewing moving pictures, considerably facilitates the transfer of knowledge from theory to practice. All these elements are presented in a didactical manner and designed professionally. Research results from avalanche release, snow metamorphism or energy transfer modelling on the snowcover for example, were transferred into interactive animations for the CD. Furthermore, a new rule based avalanche hazard model, called “Danger Analyser”, has been developed specially for this project, giving the user an opportunity to combine several avalanche forming factors and to see how the chosen combination influences the avalanche danger. The user can conduct a calculation of the avalanche danger interactively. “WHITE RISK” is widely distributed and attractive for many different groups of winter sport enthusiasts. It appeals to the young as well as the young at heart, to novices as well as to experts. It’s also a very useful tool for avalanche education in schools or courses and merges theory and practice an ideal way.