Smartphone applications for communicating avalanche risk information – a review of existing practices
Every year, in all mountainous regions, people are victims of avalanches. One way to decrease those losses is believed to be informing about danger levels. The paper presents a study on current practices in the development of smartphones applications 5 that are dedicated to avalanche risk communication. The analysis based on semistructured interviews with developers of smartphone apps highlights the context of their development, how choices of content and visualization were made as well as how their effectiveness is evaluated. It appears that although the communicators agree on the message to disseminate, its representation triggers debate. Moreover, only simple 10 evaluation processes are conducted but there is a clear awareness that further scientific efforts are needed to analyze the effectiveness of the smartphone apps.