ECRINS-Gravity risks and cryosphere in mountains

The ECRINS team focuses its activities on gravity hazards and the cryosphere in mountains, by developing knowledge on processes, characterization and evolution of hazards and their components, prevention and management methods, and decision support. It seeks to understand and qualify hazards, vulnerabilities (buildings, critical infrastructures, societies) and associated risks, by developing models adapted to the diversity of data and spatial and temporal scales treated : from the grain to the massif, and from the second to the century.

The work of the ECRINS team concerns :

gravitational movements : avalanches, floods and debris flows, landslides, block falls ;
the mountain cryosphere : snowfall, snow transport by wind, snow cover, glaciers ;
protective structures : avalanche control, torrential correction, blockades, etc. ;
the behaviour of geomaterials : snow, ice, mud, grains, wood, concrete, etc. ;
risk and its components : hazards, vulnerabilities, exposure ;
relationships to risks : construction, perception, representations.

The developments carried out are based on bringing together complementary disciplinary skills (statistics, hydro-climatology, snow-glaciology, geohistory, solid and fluid mechanics, civil engineering, decision sciences, artificial intelligence) in an integrated approach and by encouraging the transposition of one phenomenon to another. Risks and their past and future evolution, including emerging and cascading risks, are thus treated in all their physical, mathematical and human dimensions.