Speaker: Johannes Eschner (193-02 Computer Graphics)
Over the last 70 years, on average, there have been 30 avalanche fatalities per year in Austria, with about 75% of them occurring in backcountry avalanches (also known as tourist avalanches). Although there is publicly available information with regards to avalanche risk available for the alpine regions of Austria, this information is scattered over multiple different sources, with varying ease of access. The actual on-site risk depends a lot on the local terrain properties, such as the exposition, the height, the slope, and the ground cover. Predicting the full risk is not possible without knowledge collected on site. A risk prediction visualization should therefore guide the attention of a user towards potentially dangerous areas in order to allow them to critically judge the risk on site.
The goal of this master thesis is to build a prototype of such a visualization tool and evaluate whether it facilitates the identification of potential risk areas compared to a traditional tour planning approach, where users consult maps and avalanche reports independently from each other. The outcome will be a visually integrated risk assessment tool that can help its users to guide their risk awareness along a given route during tour planning. This risk awareness will then allow users to recognize areas of risk on site in order to evaluate the actual risk at the scene.