CAIROS

Avalanche forecasting should know no administrative boundaries, yet danger assessment by local avalanche commissions at the EU level is hampered by administrative differences that make the exchange of standardised information complex. The CAIROS project, which is one of the first cross-border initiatives in the field of local civil protection, will help overcome barriers to cross-border cooperation at local and municipal level and provide innovative impulses for other sectors.

CAIROS aims to standardise the working methods of the Avalanche Commissions in the European region of Tyrol-South Tyrol-Trentino (Euregio), to strengthen their cooperation and to improve avalanche protection, in terms of disaster resilience, using common resources. More than 300 avalanche commissions with almost 2,000 members, including volunteers, are active in the Euregio.

The project aims at integrated avalanche danger management, pooling expertise and know-how in order to direct them towards a unified effort and avoid developing redundant activities in all the areas in which the avalanche commissions operate.

The project involves one full-time coordinator per location (Innsbruck, Bolzano, Trento) and includes the Euregio partners (Tyrol, South Tyrol, Trentino) as well as the associated partners from Carinthia and Salzburg.

Improving avalanche protection in the Euregio Alpine area, particularly in man-made areas, through

• common and harmonised training, applicable in all regions involved, with uniform contents and structured methodologies (DACUM) including a "train-the-trainer" model, available in German and Italian;
• integrated software platform, also compatible with mobile devices and usable offline, to simplify data collection, decision-making, documentation and communication between committees;
• operational avalanche scenario maps, developed with the open-source tool AvaFrame, designed for immediate use by commissioners.

• 2024: project start-up and preliminary process analysis in the regions involved; launch of training and technical-operational planning; first courses (Tonale Pass, Canazei, Solda and Axamer Lizum).
• 2025: Training of trainers (train-the-trainer), development of the digital platform, production of maps with AvaFrame, trials in the pilot areas (Brenner and Passo Sella).
• 2026: Extension of the tools and methods to all local avalanche commissions in the Euregio, consolidation of cooperation, dissemination of the final results.

The modular and integrated structure of CAIROS is structured as follows:

• WP1 - Project management and communication: transversal coordination of all activities.
• WP2 - Harmonisation and standardisation of operational processes: inventory and analysis of the status, needs and methods in use by the avalanche commissions in the involved territories, definition of shared practices and a standardised workflow, elaboration of guidelines.
• WP3 - Standardised training programme and train-the-trainers: development and implementation of a coordinated and homogeneous training system, considering the analysed regional competences and practices, development of standardised teaching and learning materials and guidelines for trainers.

• WP4 - Development of common bilingual software applications: Digital data exchange and simple communication between users through:

  1. digital risk assessment application;
  2. model simulation and prognosis system;
  3. protocol and digital documentation system to increase legal certainty in the Commission's work.
  4. digital alert system based on the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) to enable information exchange and cross-border alerting.

• WP5 - Testing and experimentation in two pilot areas (Brenner Pass and Sella Pass): verification of operational effectiveness in order to promote the scalability of the tested methodologies and tools to all the Local Avalanche Commissions of the Euregio.