Smartphone applications for communicating avalanche risk information – a review of existing practices (discussion)

Smartphone applications for communicating avalanche risk information – a review of existing practices (discussion)

Charriere, M.K.M.
Bogaard, T.A.

Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Water Management

2015-11-13

Every year, in all mountainous regions, people are victims of avalanches. One way to decrease those losses is believed to be informing about danger levels. The paper presents a study on current practices in the development of smartphones applications that are dedicated to avalanche risk communication. The analysis based on semi-structured interviews with developers of smartphone apps highlights the context of their development, how choices of content and visualization were made as well as how their effectiveness is evaluated. It appears that although the communicators agree on the message to disseminate, its representation triggers debate. Moreover, only simple evaluation processes are conducted but there is a clear awareness that further scientific efforts are needed to analyze the effectiveness of the smartphone apps. Finally, the current or planned possibility for non-experts users to report feedback on the snow and avalanches conditions open the doors to a transition of these apps from one-way communication tools to two-ways communication platforms. This paper also indicates the remaining challenges that avalanche risk communication is facing, although it is disputably the most advanced and standardized practice compared to other natural hazards. Therefore, this research is of interest for the entire field of natural hazards related risk communication.

OA-Fund TU Delft

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:8086a884-a215-4f1a-a74c-e69fcee7fb60

European Geoscience Union

2195-9269

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhessd-3-6917-2015

Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 3, 2015

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2015 The Author(s)
CC Attribution 3.0 License