Monitoring of Avalanche Danger on the Territory of North Ossetia

Abstract

Abstract Avalanches are a dangerous natural phenomenon that has a significant negative impact on infrastructure facilities located on the territory of North Ossetia. Avalanches cause damage to settlements and tourist infrastructure, communication routes, power lines and forestlands. More often than others, highways suffer from avalanches, blockages on which lead to long breaks in traffic. The need to create monitoring systems to assess and promptly predict the consequences of possible emergencies caused by avalanches, the interface of such systems with local warning systems of federal executive authorities has been repeatedly discussed at various levels of government, but so far, there are no existing avalanche danger monitoring systems in the Russian Federation. The Geophysical Survey of the Russian Academy of Sciences has been conducting experiments for several years to register avalanches with the help of infrasound sensors. To register the signals, various configurations of infrasound groups consisting of three sensors set apart in space were used. As a result of the experiments, recordings of infrasound signals were obtained at various distances from the avalanche hearth. The possibility of reliable isolation and identification of infrasound signals caused by avalanches at a distance of up to 10 km is shown. Conclusions are drawn about the high efficiency of the infrasound method for recording avalanche facts. The results obtained made it possible to develop a technique for automatic detection of signals generated by avalanches, to develop an optimal configuration for building a system for continuous monitoring of avalanche activity in the North Caucasus.