SASE developing technology for real-time avalanche monitoring

WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK TECHNOLOGY WILL HELP PROTECT SOLDIERS FROM AVALANCHES

CHANDIGARH: For army soldiers stationed at border posts in the snow-capped Himalayas, an avalanche is no less threatening than the enemy fire. The army posts are dictated by strategic and tactical requirements, and the avalanche threat comes secondary.

In an avalanche on January 5, an engineer of the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) was killed near Kupwara of Jammu and Kashmir. On December 11, three soldiers were killed in Baktoor region (J&K) when an avalanche hit their post. As many as 20 soldiers died in one such incident on January 25 last year. According to the available data, one-third of the total army fatalities in Kashmir valley were due to avalanches between 2007 and 2012.

Avalanches can’t be stopped and nothing is left standing in their path. The only way to save precious lives is to predict the start of an avalanche.

The Chandigarh-based Snow and Avalanche Study Establishment (SASE) is in the process of developing technology, Wireless Sensor Network Technology (WSNT), that will be able to provide real-time predictions before an avalanche is triggered.

SASE has mapped the avalanche-prone areas and keeps updating the army about these locations. It issues avalanche warning, but, in the absence of the real time predictions the danger of getting swept away in an avalanche persists for the soldiers posted in these locations.

With the WSNT providing real-time updates it will be able to provide last minute alerts to soldiers manning such posts so that they can evacuate before an avalanche is triggered. WSNT will gather information from remote locations that would ensure uninterrupted data streaming to base station on real time basis.

“A science and technology (S&T) project is going on at an avalanche site near Dhundhi Field Research Station of SASE in Himachal. After the completion of the S&T project, the technology will be demonstrated to army and civilian authorities. The science project is expected to culminate by mid-2019,” said, Ashwagosha Ganju, director, SASE.

Evaluation of snowpack stability over a particular slope for prediction of avalanche is a challenging task. “This project will help provide a state-of-the-art autonomous platform for acquiring in-situ snow-met parameters, avalanche information and improving the forecast accuracy,” said Ganju.

WSNT are low-power, multihopping systems that combine multiple wireless nodes into an extendable network environment with non-line-of-sight coverage and a self-healing data path that provide ubiquitous sensing of any environment in the monitoring of parameters that may lead to natural disasters.