Within the H2020 project PROSNOW, 13 European partners – including LIFE – developed a demonstrator of a forecasting system specifically tailored to snow management in ski areas under the leadership of the French weather service Météo-France. The PROSNOW demonstrator represents a meteorological prediction and snow management system with a web-based user interface.
Tool for snow management in ski resorts
It combines weather and seasonal forecasts, snowpack models as well as resort-specific snow height and water consumption information to provide local snowpack simulations for different configurations of technical snowmaking and various time-scales, spanning from a few days to the seasonal scale of several months. The system aims at supporting snow managers in their daily tactical decisions, including where, when and how much snow to produce and where and when to groom. Such a system holds significant potential to increase the resilience of mountain stakeholders and support their real-time climate change adaptation potential.
Shortly: Completion of the test phase
With the last General Assembly, that due to COVID-19 took place virtually from June 5th to June 6th 2020, the three-year project is now heading into the finishing straight. In the next few weeks, the evaluation of the testing runs will be completed. They took place throughout the winter season 2019/20 in nine Alpine pilot ski resorts, including the Austrian resorts Obergurgl and Seefeld. In addition, work is in progress to transform the demonstrator into a running commercial service.
Test it yourself
Until then, the PROSNOW prediction system and all its features can be explored via the showcase access: (user name: showcase@prosnow.org, password: showcase).