Modeling Avalanches: "We're still in the kitchen."

Christophe Ancey warns against relying blindly on the output of computational avalanche models to evaluate the safety of alpine areas. Recent events prove him right. Christophe Ancey, head of EPFL's Laboratory for Environmental Hydraulics, is an expert in modeling avalanches and other environmental flows. His research group develops complex numerical models to simulate avalanches, yet he remains convinced that models alone cannot entirely replace the keen eye and intuition of an expert. In a recent article, he showed that more sophisticated computational models of avalanches do not necessarily translate to better accuracy in their results. We met with him to discuss the difficulties in modeling and predicting avalanches. On March 3rd, you were called on to provide your expert opinion on an avalanche that had come down a slope beneath a chairlift in Saint-François-Longchamp, France.