Assessment and mapping of snow avalanche risk in Russia

Abstract

AbstractThe term ‘risk’ can be defined as the probability of unfavourable consequences or negative effects. Risk can be expressed by means of various indices, such as collective or social risk (possible number of dead), individual risk (probability of a person’s death within a certain territory during 1 year), probability of losses, etc. This paper is a case study of the small-scale assessment and mapping of individual avalanche risk focused on the two regions of Russia with the highest levels of avalanche activity: the northern Caucasus and the mountainous parts of Sakhalin island. The basic indices applied for individual avalanche risk estimation are: recurrence interval of avalanches (avalanche frequency), percentage of the whole investigated territory that is occupied by avalanche-prone areas, duration of avalanche danger period, probability of a person’s stay in an avalanche-prone area during 1 day (24 hours) and during 1 year, total population of the area and its density. The results of individual avalanche risk assessment, undertaken for the territory of Russia as a whole, show that its values generally do not exceed the admissible level (from 1×10–6 to 1×10–4). However, some areas of the northern Caucasus, including famous alpine skiing resorts (Krasnaya Poliana, Dombai, the Mount Elbrus region, etc.), and of Sakhalin, including the environs of towns (Kholmsk, Nevel’sk) and other smaller human settlements, are characterized by an unacceptable level of risk. In the aggregate, areas with an unacceptable (>1×10–4) level of individual avalanche risk comprise about 7% of the whole avalanche-prone territory of the northern Caucasus, those with an admissible level comprise 52% and those with an acceptable level (<1×10–6) 41%. The corresponding values for Sakhalin are 0.1%, 14.8% and 85.1%.