Monitoring snow avalanche slopes with automated Terrestrial laser scanning

In the scope of the presented work, an Automated Terrestrial Laser Scanner (ATLS) was setup to continuously monitor potential avalanche slopes in high-alpine terrain, located in the Western Austrian Alps during two consecutive winters (2012/13 & 2013/14). To acquire and analyse the data, an elaborate scanner control and data processing framework was developed and implemented. The results show, that the ATLS setup is able to provide an almost complete series of scans of the target areas every 12h, at a mean point spacing of 0.4-1.1 m and an accuracy of ± 0.05 m (la), plus distance dependent error of < 20 ppm. An overview of limitations and further potential of these techniques conclude the paper.