My inspiration in pursuing an education in geomatics comes from the opportunity to incorporate GIS into the snow-avalanche industry in Canada. Many avalanche control operations use paper-based recordkeeping for avalanche occurrences. Many operations have automated and manual weather data collection stations capable of collecting large amounts of important information, yet often this data must be manually correlated to avalanche occurrence. Lack of combined and spatially referenced avalanche and weather data makes for cumbersome analysis, particularly when reviewing longer periods of historical information.

Attributes commonly recorded with avalanche includes location, size, and snowpack conditions. The snowpack is made up of strong and weak layers; avalanches occur when a weak layer becomes overstressed and fails. The architect of these layers is weather; it is therefore beneficial to analyse weather data in order to forecast avalanche hazard. I am focused on using GIS to visually present forecasters with historical avalanche occurrence data at large scale (by individual slope). The Canadian Avalanche Association (www.avalanche.ca) currently operates a large database of avalanche and weather data (InfoEx); however, it is spatially referenced at small scale. The visualisation of where avalanches occur and how they relate to specific weather data on a slope-by-slope scale offers a superb decision-making support tool for avalanche forecasters. With a searchable database at their disposal avalanche forecasters could draw upon historical avalanche data relating to specific locations, conditions and time periods, allowing more accurate determination of current avalanche hazard. Using the power of a GIS, this information could be quickly and meaningfully displayed to the forecaster.

My goal is to organise and visually and spatially present information in support of the avalanche forecasting process. Visualisation of avalanche occurrence data will benefit Canada's avalanche industry.