Climate change is rapidly driving environmental and cryosphere changes, presenting a major global challenge to societies. Various processes simultaneously affect high mountain regions, including glacier retreats, avalanches, landslides, new lakes, and erosion, all of which can trigger geohazards. Researchers often study these processes in isolation, limiting our understanding of their long-term impacts. Key questions focus on the future of glacierized areas, how these changes will influence geohazards, and their effects on societal resilience and adaptation.
The primary objective is to convene a series of joint workshops to design an innovative analytical framework for analyzing the interactions between cryospheric processes and related geohazards. The particular objectives are:
to initiate a long-term open geodata archive including in-situ measurements and remote sensing data;
to design new models for remote sensing time-series analysis;
to prototype a spatio-temporal computational framework for big data processing using machine learning;
to design an innovative framework for analyzing triggers, frequency, and magnitude of geohazards;
to identify adaptation strategies to reduce community vulnerability;
to continue in-situ monitoring of a key location of climate change in the Alps;
to disseminate the results to the scientific community;
to jointly develop a large-scale project, ideally funded by the European Union.
By creating a long-term geospatial archive, we will integrate diverse data types, enabling a more comprehensive examination of the processes. We will develop novel machine learning models for remote sensing time-series analysis, shifting the focus from bi-temporal change detection to continuous monitoring on a high spatial and temporal scale. Such methodology will deepen our understanding of the interactions between cryosphere processes and related geohazards. Furthermore, we will identify adaptive strategies to reduce community vulnerability, addressing socio-economic factors and enabling community-based risk assessment. Each member of the core team is responsible for one specific objective.
[e-mail]