Avalanches and rocket engines

Avalanches and debris flows are dangers that mountainous regions such as Switzerland face to a particularly high extent. Numerical models would be beneficial to the security of these regions as they would be able to identify hazardous zones with the highest degree of precision. However, those wishing to develop such models must first unravel the dynamic processes that occur inside these natural phenomena. This is precisely what researchers from the EPFL Lausanne are attempting to do with the help of lasers. Understanding such complex processes is not just of interest to experts on natural disasters, but also in far less obvious areas of application.