Grant: Engage Grants Program

Ski resorts must provide a safe and enjoyable experience for their customers. To do so, high elevation skiresorts must provide accurate ski reports and mitigate the risk of snow avalanches. Sun Peaks Resort LLP plansto expand their operations into regions that are of higher risk to avalanche. To safely manage these areas, SunPeaks Resort LLP must manage snow conditions to control avalanches. At present, Sun Peaks Resort does nothave a tool to assess the distribution and depth of snow before and after intentionally triggering avalanches.The snow safety team at Sun Peaks Resort would benefit from having a low cost method to assess avalanchetracks over a large area.In the past, snow depths and avalanche risk was assessed using point measurements from snow pillows,ultrasonic sensors or manual measurements. The snow pillows and ultrasonic sensors provide an accurate depthestimate, but they only represent a very small area. Manual measurements are intensive and, likeaforementioned methods, represent a limited spatial area.The objective of this study is to develop new tools for quantifying snow pack depth remotely using low costunmanned aerial vehicles mounted with cameras in mountainous terrain. The study will assess the ability ofcameras mounted on drones to quantify snow pack depth in regions with complex terrain. The results will worktoward the ski resort having the capacity to accurately report on snow depths over a larger area and to mitigateavalanche threats.