Development of a data and knowledge platform for environmental research. Under the Swiss Experiment platform phase II project, we are developing an advanced infrastructure for environmental research support. This will include advanced queries and visualisation of multi-dimensional data, cloud enabled storage and processing, a public webGIS platform and a knowledgebase for environmental measurements.

Available languages: English

Aufbauend auf dem Projekt NESSy, bei dem eine neue, energieeffiziente Schneilanze entwickelt wurde, verfolgt das Nachfolgeprojekt die Entwicklung einer Nullenergie - Schneilanze, welche die benötigte Energie zur Herstellung von technischem Schnee vollständig aus der Umgebung bezieht.

Available languages: German

Das entscheidende Kriterium für den Erfolg eines nachhaltig entwickelten Skis bleibt dennoch die Fahrperformance. Dieser Aspekt wurde im Rahmen einer Diplomarbeit mit dem Titel „Evaluierung eines nachhaltig konstruierten Allmountain-Skis“ untersucht.

Available languages: German

Für die Simulation der Vorgänge in einer Schneefräse, muss zum einen das Fliessverhalten von Schnee mathematisch beschrieben werden. Zum anderen muss die Computersimulation mit Messwerten aus realen Versuchen verglichen werden, um die Richtigkeit des Modells zu überprüfen.

Available languages: German

Wer im Weltcup reüssieren will, muss an seine physischen Grenzen gehen – und manchmal auch darüber hinaus. Die Belastungen sind während eines Rennens heute so hoch, dass sich die Athleten auch ohne Stürze verletzen können, wenn sie nicht zentral über dem Ski stehen.

Available languages: German

When Switzerland's athletes compete for medals at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, the SLF will be part of the team as well. Local snow and weather forecasts produced by the SLF will enable the team to prepare their competition skis in the best possible way.

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Snow cornices up to several meters high impressively show how strong the wind influences the snow cover in mountains. SLF investigates where the wind erodes and deposits snow and how the snow changes during transport through experiments in a wind tunnel and at the Weissfluhjoch Versuchsfeld.

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In the SLF boundary-layer wind-tunnel the characteristics of saltation are investigated. In particular, the snow particle size distribution, the snow mass concentration and the intermittency of snow transport are addressed. Additionally, particle trajectories of drifting snow, i.e. their ejection/impact velocities and angles, heights, distances, and curvatures are studied.

Available languages: German English

In the mountains, snow is distributed very unevenly; enormous variations frequently occur over a very small area. For the first time, SLF researchers have now succeeded in characterising this variability with the aid of a relatively simple statistical model. The technique has the capacity to improve the forecasting of high and low water levels in future.

Available languages: German French Italian

Alpine3D is a spatially distributed (surface), three dimensional (atmospheric) model for analyzing and predicting dynamics of snow-dominated surface processes in mountainous topography. It includes models for snow cover, vegetation and soil, snow transport, radiation transfer and runoff which can be enabled or disabled on demand. The model supports a variety of input options including interpolation of meteorological weather stations, input from a meteorological model or from remote sensing data (MeteoIO) and has been parallelized in order to run on computing grids or clusters.

Available languages: English