Abstract
(Englisch)
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Introduction
Currently, about 60 million ski tourists around the world are using the facilities of the ski resorts. To cope with yearly flow of tourists concentrating in the winter period, ski resorts are planned and designed for maximum efficiency. Efficiency is needed because space is limited by the natural topography. Moreover, alpine ecosystems are among the most sensitive systems, reacting quickly to disturbances. Thus, the complexity of managing a ski area is large taking into consideration the economic and tourist demands as well as the highly vulnerable environment in which the exploitation of the area takes place.
2 Time frame
The CARTESIAN project started in September 1998 and ended in November 2000 with three final meetings in France, Switzerland and Austria to make the achievements of CARTESIAN known to the skiing industry.
3 Highlights and achievements
The CARTESIAN project has led to the following useful products:
3D visualizations and animations
Ski areas can realistically be visualized making use of 3D computer animations. Fast and easy manipulation enable the possibility to show the visual impact of possible measures such as the building of new ski lifts, slopes etc. This can be of great value to decision-makers. Besides this 3D images and 3D flights are a very attractive way to promote ski areas.
In the CARTESIAN project 'low end' (techniques suitable for average PC with commercially available software) and high-end visualizations (developed on powerful workstations with special software) have been created. They are base on Digital Elevation Model and classified satellite images.
Snow cover and snow cover duration maps
The variation of snow cover is an important factor in alpine regions on fauna, flora, climate, hazards and ski tourism. Snowfall is influenced by different climatic factors and in turn the snow cover affects the climate. Therefore the spatial distribution of snow is an essential factor for climate change studies. On the other hand, demonstration of snow cover development throughout the year is of high relevance for promotion of ski areas. Conventionally, point measurements are used to explore the snow cover. This results in a coarse spatial resolution. In contrary, remote sensing techniques allow to study the spatial distribution of snow quantitatively for larger areas with high resolution (1-15 m). Snow cover duration maps are created from a series of snow cover maps. These maps give good information on the number of days a certain area is covered with snow. The snow cover maps are also used to calculate the amount of snowmelt runoff.
Land use and land use change maps
For detailed environmental impact assessments and monitoring studies, it is essential to have up-to-date and reliable information on land cover and the changes occurring in it. Detailed monitoring of land cover features is relevant for a wide range of environmental applications dealing with subjects like environmental protection and land degradation, but also with socio-economic related subjects like urban expansion and planning of new infrastructure. Land use maps are derived from various satellite data and aerial photographs by different classification techniques. For all three study areas land use maps have been created. In the Austrian area the focus was on forest cover change. For the Swiss and French areas, the impact of ski tourism on soil coverage and land use has been investigated.
Hazard maps
Since it is not possible to conduct a natural hazards study for large regions (+/- 600 km2) in two years, a single hazardous geomorphologic process, rockfall, has been analyzed for the whole Montafon region, including the Silvretta Nova ski resort. Rockfall is a process that can be a threat for ski tourists and may affect the protective forest on mountain slopes. A model for spatial analysis of rockfall processes and patterns has been developed. The model is GIS raster based and needs as input: a Digital Elevation Model (DEM), geological data (a GIS layer with spatial distribution of rock types and other geological parameters such as surface roughness, density, and coefficient of restitution), land cover data (available from a classification of a Landsat TM satellite image of September 1998).
Detailed monitoring and high quality presentations of ski areas
IKONOS is the first commercial very high-resolution satellite (4 by 4 m2 in four spectral and 1 m2 in the panchromatic band). This kind of images form a perfect possibility to perform high detailed monitoring of processes occurring at a local scale. As IKONOS satellite was not ready at the start of CARTESIAN, the data has been used only for visualizations for presentation and promotion purposes at the end of the porject.
Ski area design tool
For the Austrian study area, a ski area design tool has been developed. This instrument enables the simple spatial planning of ski areas. Behind a graphical interface is a simple model that calculates the effects of the measures the user designs as construction of new ski lifts and ski slopes, the placement of snow guns or changing the ski pass prices. With some modifications and additions, it is possible to use this instrument for any (simplified) spatial planning problem.
Ski area management information system (MIS)
In order to show how the satellite data can be used within ski resort management, a Management Information System (MIS) was developed. A MIS is a computer system that facilitates decision-making processes by making the problem of a ski manager by means of 7 steps more transparent. (1) Issues and Problems (what is going on?), (2) Objectives and Criteria (what must be accomplished, how is this established?), (3) Scenario (what are the exogenous factors?) (4) Alternatives, strategies and visions (how can the problem be solved?), (5) Analysis (analysis relevant combinations of scenarios and alternatives), (6) Evaluation (which alternative/case/vision prevails?) and (7) Presentation (what does it look like?)
Three case study areas each representing a particular management issue of a ski resort were used to develop the MIS (1) Sion, (Switzerland): involved in the planning of the organisation of the Olympic games of 2006. (2) Montafon (Austria): Main questions are related to the trade off between economic, social and environmental aspects. (3) Les Arcs (France): The main issue for the ski resort Les Arcs was to define a vision for the future by means of participatory processes with different stakeholders (Municipality, lift company, economists, environmentalists.
4 Evaluation - user component
The overall satisfaction of the delivered products by the customers is high. At the beginning of the project, remote sensing has been an unknown technique, and the expectations were relatively low. The products made the involved customers enthusiastic about the possibilities of remote sensing, especially on a regional scale. Finally, the satisfaction of the customers also resulted in an effort to organize international workshops in three countries.
5 Exploitation plan
From the beginning, CARTESIAN has put a strong accent on the dissemination and exploitation of results. The project team strongly believes in the delivered products and its commercial value in the future. A set of meetings took place to meet potential customers outside the consortium and to measure their reactions.
6 Conclusions
CARTESIAN has shown that space technology can be a cost effective information tool for regional and national authorities to preserve natural resources and monitor socio-economic activities. It therefore supports ski resort managers to come to a more efficient management, by providing improved monitoring capacity for resource management and information on environmental impacts. Satellite information facilitates furthermore the development of interactive promotional tools such as 3D animations. Finally, the CARTESIAN project recommends a further elaboration of high resolution satellite information (eg. IKONOS) for future ski resort monitoring and 3D applications.
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