Hydrosys

Hydrosys (http://www.hydrosysonline.eu/) is an interdisciplinary EU project, bringing together partners from computer science, engineering, hydrology and natural hazards research.

The aim of the project is to develop a system infrastructure which will help various user groups with fieldwork and data capture. The primary user groups targeted by this research will be those working in natural resources: their changes, management and usage, e.g. natural hazards management, ski area operators, energy and water resource management and engineers and scientists from various other areas. Rapidly deployable mobile, flexible field computers and sensor networks will be developed according to the requirements of these user groups, which together with an expanded network of different sensors, will enable rapid reactionary deployments to unexpected natural hazard events.

The new devices will enable various streaming measured data sources to be queried, used in models and visualised in the field. This streaming data will also be transferable in real-time to other decision makers and interested parties. In this way, the user will be able to react quickly to changing circumstances and requirements.

SLF’s main role in Hydrosys will be to develop requirements and scenarios against which the technology will be developed and tested. The two primary scenarios are:

Monitoring infrastructure effected by the melting of alpine permafrost due to climate change. A user friendly system will be built for this context in order to help e.g. ski lift operators, to quickly and easily decide if buildings and lift infrastructure built in alpine permafrost are subject to shifts such as sinking or tilting of the foundations.

Assisting scientists in fieldwork to better understand the formation and triggering of wet snow avalanches. Hydrosys will provide an infrastructure to help to make fieldwork for the measurement of wet snow avalanche conditions safer and more effective. In order to facilitate this, the device will make measurement data from various sensors queryable in realtime and the user will be able to query or trigger snowpack simulations in the field.