Snow Avalanche: Study and Detection using Remote Sensing Techniques

Snow avalanche is one of the most life-claiming calamities in the world. In avalancheprone regions, it is necessary to alert the population about such events beforehand to abate the effects. Hence it is important to build a snow avalanche detection system which will also detect landslides. To understand how an avalanche is started, snow physics needs to be understood which describes us about types of snow avalanche. If the snow is loose then possibility of snow-slide is more which depends on some of the parameters such as depth and character of old and new snow, moisture content, precipitation intensity and some environmental factors such as wind action and temperature, as described in this paper. It also lists some of the state-of-the-art instruments used in avalanche detection and some employing acoustic nature of avalanche. Wireless sensor nodes can be used as they are low power devices and can be adapted to suit the intended application. Finally, we brief about implementation using ZigBee and tabulate some of the popular wireless sensor nodes and their features which can be used for the same. Keywords— snow avalanche, infrasound monitor, snow crystals, remote sensing, wireless sensor nodes, ZigBee