Objective
Glacier catastrophes like extreme floods due to lake outburst or sudden draining of internal water pockets and devastating ice avalanches are scarce but highly dangerous because unpredictable. Today, dangerous sites like moraine dammed lakes or serac falls are NOT systematically surveyed, by lack of knowledge and financial support. Dangerous sites are hundreds in Europe (F, CH, I, A, N, IS). Because of varying environmental and climatological conditions (increasing tourism, global change inducing a glacier retreat in the Alps-), the risk is increasing. The fight against this hazard starts with the development of a database gathering every information on past events and on actual dangerous sites. A durable network of field technicians will permanently up-date this database. Scientific studies on each phenomenon will be conducted on selected sites. Survey techniques and methods will be elaborated and tested in order to prevent and mitigate new catastrophes.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
38402 SAINT-MARTIN-D'HERES
France