Scientists are starting a new field campaign in the Val Ferret. They're collecting data to study how the environment influences flood rates in mountain valleys. Predicting natural disasters in order to inform and warn populations residing in risk zones is a major challenge today. "Mathematical models exist, but they still don't take into account all the data that are needed to establish reliable predictions, such as the influence of air temperature, the formation of thermal winds or the impact of precipitation," explains Professor Marc Parlange. The project his team started in 2008 with a single weather station has grown, and today the stations spread over more than 20 square kilometers, covering a large part of the Val Ferret watershed. Working in the mountains requires a specific set of skills. The weather stations are installed in strategic but often hard to reach locations in the valley, whose altitude difference from bottom to top is 800 to 1,000m.
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