Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PROSNOW (Provision of a prediction system allowing for management and optimization of snow in Alpine ski resorts)

Teaser

The Horizon2020 PROSNOW project develops innovative ways to manage snow in alpine ski resorts. Indeed, snow management pratices such as grooming, snowmaking (i.e., artificial production of snow) and snow farming (i.e., summertime storage of snow) have become routine components...

Summary

The Horizon2020 PROSNOW project develops innovative ways to manage snow in alpine ski resorts. Indeed, snow management pratices such as grooming, snowmaking (i.e., artificial production of snow) and snow farming (i.e., summertime storage of snow) have become routine components of ski resorts operations, supporting the sustainability of their commercial activities despite highly variable meteorological and snow conditions. Interannual variability of snow conditions and long term climate change impacts (e.g. reduction of lower elevation natural snow cover and conequences) are key background information for ski resorts operations. Managing these impacts can be achieved by better anticipation capabilities, not only of short-term meteorological conditions, but also longer term –within the snow season- snow conditions based on state-of-the-art snowpack models fed by a variety of meteotorogical sources, in order to make informed decisions on day-to-day management activities, in particular snow production and grooming schedules.
In order to provide relevant information for better snow management in ski resorts, PROSNOW brings together meteorological and seasonal forecasts, spanning from a few days to a few months, snowpack models making it possible to represent the effects of grooming and snowmaking configurations, and additional data sources from the ski resorts, such as snow depth observations onboard grooming machines and measurements of snow production. These observations make it possible to initialize dedicated model chains for predicting future snow conditions days to months ahead, taking into account the predictability arising from meteorological and seasonal forecast, but also the influence of the initial snow conditions. Remote sensing is used to complement the evaluation and initialization of the model chains.
The PROSNOW concept materializes in a web-based user interface, the PROSNOW demonstrator, bringing together all knowledge elements developed through the project, taking into account user requirements gathered through dedicated inquiries and local working groups, which gather project partners and pilot ski resorts in order to better assess the user demand and the capacity to meet it using state-of-the-art observation and modeling tools.
The project includes a strong exploitation, dissemination and communication component, exploring and addressing enabling conditions for a sustained, commercially viable product after the completion of the project. It develops training material for snow management in ski resorts, and provides a unique platform for raising the capacity of the ski tourism industry to optimize snow managements, thereby reducing its environmental footprint and reducing related operating costs. While the project focuses on season-scale snow management, it is strongly connected to complementary projects and initiatives addressing the long term climate chang impacts on the ski tourism industry, such as the Copernicus Climate Change Services (C3S) Sectoral Information System (SIS) European Tourism – Mountain Tourism Meteorology and Snow Indicators (MTMSI).

Work performed

Work since the beginning of the project has addressed simultaneously the development of the PROSNOW concept on the supply side, the demand side, the integration and the exploitation and dissemination. On the supply side, the main activity has consisted in establishing bridges between meteorological observations and forecasts at various scales and timespans, and their use for driving snowpack models accounting for snow management. This has formed the body of a model description article, first presented at the International Snow Science Workshop in Innsbruck (Hanzer et al., 2018). Several key software developments behind the scene were critical in making it possible to interoperate various snowpack models involved in the project, driven by a wide diversity of observation configurations in and around ski resorts. Remote sensing data was used to evaluate model performance at the pilot ski resorts used in PROSNOW. On the demand side, targeted meetings were organized, involving commercial partners in PROSNOW and also representative of the pilot ski resorts, to better assess the requirements of ski resorts to better anticipate and manage snow as a key resource. The business model of ski resorts, and the fraction of snow management on the cost structure of a ski resort was also investigated, in order to better characterize the financial gain that PROSNOW could provide – in addition to savings on environmental resources such as water and energy. Knowledge elements from the supply and demand side were brought together for the development of the PROSNOW demonstrator, which is an advanced mock-up of the user facing interface for accessing the PROSNOW results. This consists of a geographical representation of a ski resort, making it possible to explore in space and time the variations of snow conditions upon various snow management configurations. The demonstrator was used to gather feedback from îlot ski resorts, in order to better address their needs in the final version of the PROSNOW product. In addition to the demonstrator, PROSNOW is also developing interfaces so as to inject PROSNOW information into third-party software, which are already provided by service providers in ski resorts.

Final results

PROSNOW is filling a gap in snow management in ski resorts, bringing together state-of-the-art snow forecasting tools equipped with snow management representation, in order to provide concrete, real-time evidence of the long term (at the scale of the season) impact of daily tactical choices for snow management. Although climate change impact studies increasingly rely on snowpack models accounting for snow management, with increased realism over climate change projections using natural snow only, PROSNOW is the first real time implementation of such models. Expected achievements until the end of the project include bringing together the full suite of forecasting options into the demonstrator, on the supply side, and on the demande side a thorough analysis of the market demand for such a product at the European scale. Work will increasingly focus on the exploitation and dissemination of the PROSNOW concept and product, thereby moving towards a viable commercial service targeting the winter 2020-2021 for a first year of commercial operation. Feedback from pilot ski resorts, Users Advisory Board members and mid-term review of the project will be critical in meeting these ambitious goals.

Website & more info

More info: http://prosnow.org/.