Field Survey of the 2017 Rigopiano Avalanche

Abstract

In the evening of January 18, 2017, a large snow avalanche descended from the east flank of Monte Siella in the municipality of Farindola in the Abruzzo region of Italy. It completely destroyed the Hotel Rigopiano and killed 29 of the 40 persons waiting there for evacuation, making it one of the most disastrous avalanches in Europe since World War II. The avalanche also destroyed or heavily damaged more than 5 ha of partly mature and partly young beech forest. The survey reported here focused on the forest damage in order to provide data for numerical simulations of the event that take into account the retarding effect of the forest. The observations are supplemented by information collected from diverse sources on the Internet. In addition, a digital elevation model with a resolution of 10 ×10 mଶ has been retrieved and prepared for numerical simulations with dynamical models like RAMMS::AVALANCHE and MoT-Voellmy. Raster files that specify the initial conditions (spatial distribution of release height, erodible snow-cover depth) and boundary conditions (shear strength of the erodible snow cover, forest density times mean trunk diameter) are also provided. These files are required for numerical simulations with MoT-Voellmy.