Rendena100.eu
Introduction
Software packages for hydrology and environmental engineering have been developing in univerties or research institutions to model mathematically natural process of the water cycle within a watershed or a generic geographic area.
Thanks to the usage of free geographical data somehow released by public institutions, engineers, researchers in environmental science, partitioners or simple end-users can find answers to their questions and investigations by applying these data to such mathematical model. Moreover, sophisticated data analyse platform, such as R, allow to interpret the model output results automatically and provide a readable information for the end-user.
In this site, as an example, maps of snow depth in Val Rendena (Trentino, Italy) and its neighbourhood were computed with a 100 metre spatial resolution.
Modelling and Mountain
This site tries to accomplish the usage of mathematical modelling with some features of the alpine environment. The purpose is:
1) coupling of sophisticating models with the most useful methods for data analysis and visualisation making use of web geographic mapping tools;
2) promoting command-line tools in order to propose reproducible and scalable solutions.
Data Analysis
Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modelling data with the goal of discovering useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making. Data are a set of values of qualitative or qualitative variable. Raw data are data collected directly from a source: a model or an observation. Data Analysis is a set of implemented algorithms or methodologies that allow to transform raw data into useful information for end users. Among widespread software platforms and programming languages, this site post processes model input/output with R scripting.
Snow Hydrology
Snow is a key resource for the mountain environment. Snow is also an economic resource directly related to winter sports and activities: skiing, ski touring, hiking, i.e. a modern use of the landscape .It is also a resource for water outflows in rivers and mountain basins. Snow constitutes a danger, when the snowpack is unstable and causes detachment; human activities can be attacked. Snow is finally important for life of the animals that inhabit the alpine areas, as it dominates their movement for the supply of food and affects their mobility.